Epidemiology of surgical occupational exposures in an infectious disease hospital: a 5-year retrospective study

To analyze the epidemiological characteristics and associated factors at the univariate level of surgical occupational exposures in an infectious disease hospital over the past 5 years, and to provide evidence for developing targeted prevention strategies.

We retrospectively collected surgical occupational exposure reports from an infectious disease hospital between January 2020 and December 2024, including 104 valid cases. Statistical analysis was performed using R 4.4.2 software to describe the temporal, demographic, departmental, role-based, and exposure-type distributions, along with a univariate analysis.

The incidence of occupational exposure showed an increasing trend year by year, with a significant rise in 2024. Males accounted for 71.2% of the exposures, with the majority aged 25-39 years. Surgical assistants had the highest exposure proportion (50.0%), and the departments with the most exposure were Infectious Surgery and Orthopedics (18.3% each). The primary type of exposure was sharp injuries (60.6%). Significant differences were observed among the different surgical roles in terms of sex, age, education, and department (p < 0.001). Emergency surgery exposure was concentrated in Orthopedics (46.2%) and Obstetrics (15.4%), predominantly involving grade 2-3 surgeries.

This study revealed a heterogeneous risk pattern for surgical occupational exposure in an infectious disease hospital. Surgical assistants and the Orthopedics/Infectious Disease Surgery departments constituted the core high-risk cluster, confirming that job role and departmental specialty are more critical determinants of exposure risk than individual experience. Notably, the recurrence of nearly half of all exposure events provides compelling evidence that current prevention strategies-centered predominantly on training and personal protective equipment-exhibit structural failure in effectively breaking the chain of exposure. Therefore, effective risk control must transcend individual behavioral discipline and shift toward a precision prevention system anchored in engineering controls and systemic workflow interventions.