Abstract
Surgical site infections are a significant economic healthcare burden and lead to increased morbidity for patients. Delayed sternal closure after congenital heart surgeries remains an area of major concern with higher postoperative wound infection rates than those surgeries where the sternum is initially closed. There is no national guideline that is available for use by congenital heart surgery programs. Perioperative infection prevention policy, including choice of antibiotics, is quite variable among different programs and the rate of surgical site infections varies from 3 to 18%. In this article, we will be discussing current practices and surgical site infections rate from recent literature review.
Keywords
Delayed Sternal Closure, Sternal Wound Infection, Surgical Site Infection, Mediastinitis, Bundled approach, Patient Safety