• The American surgeon · Nov 1995

    Comparative Study

    Increased incidence of nosocomial infections in obese surgical patients.

    • P S Choban, R Heckler, J C Burge, and L Flancbaum.
    • Department of Surgery, Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus 43210, USA.
    • Am Surg. 1995 Nov 1;61(11):1001-5.

    AbstractObesity has long been considered a potential risk factor for poor outcome following surgical procedures. However, controversy exists regarding the clinical impact of this problem because of a paucity of data regarding the incidence and risk of nosocomial infections in obese surgical patients. This retrospective study was undertaken to compare the nosocomial infection rate in obese and normal weight surgical patients. All patients undergoing general, urologic, vascular, thoracic, or gynecologic surgical procedures between October 1 and December 31, 1991, were reviewed. Nosocomial infection data were obtained from the Department of Hospital Epidemiology. A total of 849 patients were evaluated, of which 536 (63%) were normal weight (BMI < 27 kg/m2), 175 (21%) were obese (BMI 27-31 kg/m2), and 138 (16%) were severely obese (BMI > 31 kg/m2). Age, mortality, and American Society of Anesthesia (ASA) risk scores did not differ among the three groups. There were significant increases in the number and percent of nosocomial infections in the obese populations, with rates of 0.05 per cent in normal weight, compared to 2.8 per cent and 4.0 per cent in obese and severely obese groups (P < 0.01). Infections consisted of seven wound infections, five C. difficile infections, one pneumonia, and three bacteremias. No differences in distribution between groups were evident. Mortality was similar among the groups. These data support the hypothesis that obesity is a significant risk factor for clinically relevant nosocomial infections in surgical patients.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…