My hospital requires joint replacement surgery patients to attend a class prior to surgery. There's lots of information to prepare you and everyone is given chlorhexidine solution and told to scrub with it the night before surgery. Also, at a pre-op visit you are given a nasal swab test for MRSA, methicillin resistant staph aureus, one of the dangerous and antibiotic resistant bugs that frequent hospitals. Apparently the regimen is successful in preventing serious post op infection.
A study was done at the veterans hospital in Houston, Texas beginning in May, 2013. Patients were provided chlorhexidine cloths and nasal and mouth rinses prior to surgery. They also watched a video about MRSA and the danger it poses. Approximately 350 patients went through the course and they were compared to about 350 patients who had, as they put it, "hardware" implanted surgically prior to the new protocol and did not receive chlorhexidine nor the related instruction.
The patients in the study had a SSI, surgical site infection, rate of 1.1%. The control group, those operated before the new protocol was instituted, had a SSI rate of almost 4%. This was considered significant.
Their conclusion: "Our study demonstrates that preoperative MRSA decontamination with chlorhexidine washcloths and oral rinse and intranasal povidone-iodine decreased the SSI rate by more than 50% among patients undergoing elective orthopedic surgery with hardware implantation. Universal decontamination using this low-cost protocol may be considered as an additional prevention strategy for SSIs in patients undergoing orthopedic surgery with hardware implantation and warrants further study."
There are three points to stress here:
This is such a simple, inexpensive step to take to prevent infection. My group was also advised to not shave the area to be operated as little cuts could introduce bacteria. I don't know if, in the case of knees, the area was shaved at the time of surgery. I think not.
I'm sorry I did not get the identity of the people who did the study so to give them credit.
I haven't known a simple way to express what happened to me surgically. Now I know...I had new hardware installed. Would you say I was up-graded?
A study was done at the veterans hospital in Houston, Texas beginning in May, 2013. Patients were provided chlorhexidine cloths and nasal and mouth rinses prior to surgery. They also watched a video about MRSA and the danger it poses. Approximately 350 patients went through the course and they were compared to about 350 patients who had, as they put it, "hardware" implanted surgically prior to the new protocol and did not receive chlorhexidine nor the related instruction.
The patients in the study had a SSI, surgical site infection, rate of 1.1%. The control group, those operated before the new protocol was instituted, had a SSI rate of almost 4%. This was considered significant.
Their conclusion: "Our study demonstrates that preoperative MRSA decontamination with chlorhexidine washcloths and oral rinse and intranasal povidone-iodine decreased the SSI rate by more than 50% among patients undergoing elective orthopedic surgery with hardware implantation. Universal decontamination using this low-cost protocol may be considered as an additional prevention strategy for SSIs in patients undergoing orthopedic surgery with hardware implantation and warrants further study."
There are three points to stress here:
This is such a simple, inexpensive step to take to prevent infection. My group was also advised to not shave the area to be operated as little cuts could introduce bacteria. I don't know if, in the case of knees, the area was shaved at the time of surgery. I think not.
I'm sorry I did not get the identity of the people who did the study so to give them credit.
I haven't known a simple way to express what happened to me surgically. Now I know...I had new hardware installed. Would you say I was up-graded?
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