Incidence of surgical site infection in head and neck surgery: a prospective cohort study.

OBJECTIVES

Surgical site infection (SSI) causes high morbidity. Our aim was to study the incidence of SSI and to assess its risk factors in patients undergoing head and neck surgery.

METHODS

A prospective cohort study was conducted, from July 2007 to June 2023, by collecting data on patient, surgery, and infection-related variables, and calculating the incidence of SSI after a maximum follow-up period of 1 year. We assessed the effect of the different risk factors on SSI, using the relative risk adjusted with a logistic regression model.

RESULTS

We included 423 patients, mean age 65.8 years (standard deviation: 12.4). The most frequent comorbidities were neoplasms (82.1%) and diabetes mellitus (29.3%). The cumulative incidence of surgical infection across the follow-up period was 6.4% (95% confidence interval: 4.1-8.7). Most infections were superficial, with the most common microorganism being Enterobacter cloacae (42.8%). Duration of surgery above the 75th percentile was the only risk factor associated with SSI in the multivariate analysis (p = 0.01).

CONCLUSIONS

The incidence of infection was low in neck surgery. Infection rates must be assessed continuously, and SSI risk factors identified early through the implementation of prospective hospital surgical-infection surveillance and control programs.