[Risk factors associated with the development of surgical wound infection in a general surgery service]

To evaluate incidence, etiology and risk factors of surgical wound infection (SWI) in a service of general surgery in a tertiary hospital.

Retrospective cohort study. The relative risk (RR) and its 95% confidence interval (CI) have been used as a measure of association between risk factors and SWI. Multiple logistic regression has been selected as multivariate analysis.

Of 619 surgical patients, 60 (9.7%) developed SWI. The most frequently isolated microorganism was Enterococcus (26%), but a higher prevalence of gram negative was also found. On admission, the factors associated with SWI were: diabetes mellitus (RR = 2.5, CI95% = [1.0-6.3]), age older than 65 years (RR = 2.66, CI95% = [0.8-9.0]) and contaminated and dirty surgery (linear trends chi square, p = 0.044); among the amendable medical care factors, the duration of the surgery is the unique to be pointed out with an increment of 5 /1000 per minute (p = 0.011). The admission an emergency unit presented a non significant adjusted RR of SWI near to 3 (CI95% = [0.9-9.6]).

SWI is related most importantly to risk factors at admission not amendable by the physician. Our results showed that the only factor susceptible to be changed is the duration of the surgical intervention.