Original articleCongenital heart surgeryUse of Administrative Data for Surgical Site Infection Surveillance After Congenital Cardiac Surgery Results in Inaccurate Reporting of Surgical Site Infection Rates
Section snippets
Material and Methods
A retrospective analysis of the cardiac surgical procedure volume and the number of SSI cases at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia from January 1, 2008, through December 31, 2011, was performed. This was a QI initiative and was exempt from Institution Review Board oversight.
Cardiac Procedure Volume (Denominator)
From January 1, 2008, to December 31, 2011, 2,474 cardiac surgical procedures were performed and reported to the STS Congenital Heart Surgery Database. The specific International Paediatric and Congenital Cardiac Codes mapped to 135 STS Congenital Heart Surgery Short List Procedures.
During the study period, 1,425 cases were targeted for NHSN surveillance and reporting. Of these 1,425 cases, 1,323 were also identified in the STS Congenital Heart Surgery Database. Thus, 102 cases were
Comment
This study did not seek to define a “true” SSI rate. It was a QI exercise to help understand issues and inconsistencies with current reporting practices, delineate existing problems with workflow and methodologies, and to identify potential solutions. There are significant differences in SSI rates based on the procedures selected for surveillance, the data sources used, the criteria used for defining a SSI, and the application of the criteria. To be useful, SSI data must be accurate, complete,
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Improving cardiac surgical site infection reporting and prevention by using registry data for case ascertainment presented at the Fifty-first Annual Meeting of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, San Diego, CA, Jan 24-28, 2015.
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