SURGICAL SITE INFECTION IN RESECTIONS OF DIGESTIVE SYSTEM TUMOURS

Postoperative infectious complications are extremely important to surgeons and the entire medical care team. Among these complications, surgical site infection (SSI) appears to be one of the earliest and most prevalent events and is considered an inherent complication of surgical procedures. In oncological patients submitted to resections of digestive system tumors, there is a confluence of several risk factors for SSI, making it necessary to establish measures to maximize the control of this condition to provide a better prognosis for these patients. Some risk factors for SSI are the manipulation of structures hosting the highest density of pathogenic microorganisms, such as the colon, the patient's performance status, the patient's nutritional status, the use of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy, and the surgical procedure itself, which tends to last longer and be more complex than surgeries for benign conditions of the digestive system. Therefore, this review sought to provide a qualitative analysis and a summary of the literature regarding the SSI of postoperative tumor patients who underwent surgical resection and were well-structured postoperatively, to provide objective data on this problem, and alert about the well-structured needs of individualized pre-, peri-, and post-protocols to avoid the development of these events.