• C-S Hsu and Y-C Fan.
• Graduate Institute of Nursing, College of Nursing, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 110, Taiwan.
• Br J Anaesth. 2011 Nov 1;107(5):757-61.

BackgroundThis study compared the odds ratio (OR) of surgical site infection (SSI) within 30 days after operation with general anaesthesia (GA) or neuraxial anaesthesia (NA) in Taiwanese women undergoing Caesarean delivery (CD).MethodsAn epidemiologic design was used. The study population was based on the records of all deliveries in hospitals or obstetric clinics between January 2002 and December 2006 in Taiwan. Anonymized claim data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) were analysed. Women who received CD were identified from the NHIRD by Diagnosis-Related Group codes. The mode of anaesthesia was defined by order codes. Multivariate logistic regression was used to estimate the OR and associated 95% confidence interval (CI) of post-CD SSIs for GA when compared with NA. The outcome was whether a woman had been diagnosed as having an SSI during the hospitalization or was re-hospitalized within 30 days after CD for the treatment of SSIs using five or 81 International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) codes.ResultsAmong the 303 834 Taiwanese women who underwent CD during the 5 yr observation period, the 30 day post-CD SSI rate was 0.3% or 0.9% based on five or 81 ICD-9-CM codes. The multivariate-adjusted OR of having post-CD SSIs in the GA group was 3.73 (95% CI, 3.07-4.53) compared with the NA group (P<0.001) using five ICD-9-CM codes for the definition of SSI.ConclusionsGA for CD was associated with a higher risk of SSI when compared with neuraxial anaesthesia.

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