Education & Training Patient Risk Factors and Best Practices for Surgical Site Infection Prevention

The risk of infection varies by type of surgical incision site. For example, invasive procedures that penetrate bacteria-laden body sites, especially the bowel, are more prone to infection. The traditional wound classification system designed by the CDC stratifies the increased likeli-hood and extent of bacterial contamination during the surgical procedure into four separate classes of procedures:9! Clean wounds The wound is considered to be clean when the operative procedure does not enter into a normally colonized viscus or lumen of the body. SSI rates in this class of procedures are less than 2%, depending upon clinical variables, and often originate from contaminants in the OR environment, from the surgical team or most commonly from skin.! Clean-contaminated wounds A site is considered to be clean-contaminated when th