The multi-center study of 659 patients undergoing multiple surgical procedure types tracked the clinical and financial outcomes of surgical site infections that are directly attributable to MRSA (methicillin-resistant Stapylococcus aureus). Researchers looked at the 90-day postoperative period for patients over a five-year period in one tertiary care center and six community hospitals in the Duke Infection Control Outreach Network.
The researchers compared hospital readmission, mortality, length of hospital stay and hospital charges for patients in three groups. Some had surgical site infections due to MRSA, some were infected with MSSA (methicillin-susceptible S. aureus) and some were uninfected. The study, published in PLoS ONE, evaluated deep-incision and organ/space infections, which are more severe than superficial infections at the site of incision.
The study found that patients with surgical site infections due to MRSA were 35 times more likely to be readmitted and seven times more likely to die within 90 days compared to uninfected surgical patients. These patients also required more than three weeks of additional hospitalization and accrued more than $60,000 in additional charges.
However, when MRSA patients were compared with MSSA patients, there was no significant difference in mortality rates. The study did find that MRSA patients, when compared to MSSA patients, had longer hospital stays by an average of six days and incurred an average of $24,000 more in hospital charges than MSSA patients.
Read the Duke Medicine release on post-surgical infections costs.
