[Postoperative wound infection. Indicator of clinical quality?].

Introduction: The aim of the study was to gain experience with continuous electronic registration of data regarding surgical postoperative wound infection after heart surgery.

Material And Methods: Every patient undergoing cardiac surgery from February 1999 to May 1999 was entered in a prospective study and followed up for 30 days. Information on the type of operation, development of postoperative wound infection, risk factors for wound infection, and a risk stratification was sent electronically to a central database.

Results: All 180 operations were registered in the database, and risk variables were registered for all patients except one (99.4%). A spot test comprising 32% of the operations showed a diagnostic specificity of 78% with respect to correct diagnosis of wound infection. Only 4/7 (57%) of the infections were registered in the database. All deep wound infections were registered during the study period.

Discussion: The study showed that risk stratification of data in relation to postoperative wound infection after heart surgery can be registered continuously in a central database. Registration of all postoperative wound infections requires several resources and may be incomplete. However, the high quality of registration of deep wound infection and risk stratification indicates that registration of deep wound infection could be an indicator of clinical quality.