The effects of laparoscopic cholecystectomy, hysterectomy, and appendectomy on nosocomial infection risks.

Background: Recent reviews of the literature have concluded that additional, well-defined studies are required to clarify the superiority of laparoscopic or open surgery. This paper presents precise estimates of nosocomial infection risks associated with laparoscopic as compared to open surgery in three procedures: cholecystectomy, appendectomy, and hysterectomy.

Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed on 11,662 admissions from 22 hospitals that have a nosocomial infection monitoring system.

The costs of nosocomial infections.

Background: Although nosocomial infections (NIs) are widely regarded as expensive complications of healthcare delivery, their costs have not been rigorously quantified in large-scale studies. Additionally, problems that can bias cost estimates have often gone unaddressed. For example, are NIs more likely to cause significant extra length of stay (LOS) and costs, or are they more likely to be relatively inexpensive and inevitable consequences of long and expensive hospitalizations? This study is the largest of its kind to provide a rigorous analysis of the costs of NIs.