Surveillance of surgical-site infections: impact on quality of care and reporting dilemmas.

Purpose Of Review: Among a wide range of publications on surgical-site infections (SSIs), many issues are still controversial, especially those concerning their monitoring and feedback. This review focuses on recent advances in surveillance as a tool for improving healthcare quality performance in surgery.

Recent Findings: Recent data were obtained from many reference surveillance systems which tend to demonstrate significant decrease in SSI incidence rates over a several-year period.

Is high consumption of antibiotics associated with Clostridium difficile polymerase chain reaction-ribotype 027 infections in France?

We compared antibiotic consumption between hospitals affected by a strain of Clostridium difficile designated as polymerase chain reaction-ribotype 027 (CD-027) and those unaffected during an outbreak in northern France. The mean consumption of several beta-lactams, amikacin, and fluoroquinolones was high in affected hospitals (P < .05).