Incidence of surgical-site infection is not affected by method of immediate breast reconstruction.

Background: To date, few large-scale studies have reported the incidence of surgical-site infection in women undergoing mastectomy with respect to the various methods of immediate breast reconstruction. This study assessed whether the reconstruction method was associated with the risk of surgical-site infection in these patients.

Methods: Using the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database, 9230 female patients undergoing mastectomy with immediate reconstruction from 2005 to 2009 were identified. Reconstruction was classified as autologous, prosthetic, or hybrid. The primary outcome was the incidence of surgical-site infection within 30 days of operation. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to derive the unadjusted and adjusted risk of surgical-site infection according to reconstruction method.

Results: The overall rate of surgical-site infection was 3.53 percent (95 percent CI, 3.15 to 3.94 percent), with individual rates of 3.33 percent (95 percent CI, 2.93 to 3.76 percent) for prosthetic reconstruction, 4.88 percent (95 percent CI, 3.48 to 6.11 percent) for autologous reconstruction, and 2.19 percent (95 percent CI, 0.88 to 4.45 percent) for hybrid reconstruction. The adjusted odds ratio of surgical-site infection was 1.14 (95 percent CI, 0.83 to 1.58; p = 0.42) for autologous versus prosthetic methods and 0.59 (95 percent CI, 0.27 to 1.27; p = 0.18) for hybrid versus prosthetic methods.

Conclusions: Although the risk of surgical-site infection in patients undergoing immediate reconstruction is highest with autologous and lowest with hybrid methods of reconstruction, the difference in infection risk was not statistically significant after adjustment for confounding factors. Thus, all methods of reconstruction are viable options with regard to risk for surgical-site infection.

Clinical Question/level Of Evidence: Risk, III.