Summer surgeries carry increased risk of infection

  • Temperatures above 32°C (90°F) up the risk compared to less than 4.4°C (40°F) 
  • They also found that 26.5% more infections occur in August than in January
  • How weather influences the risk of surgical site infections is unexplained 
  • Reducing surgeries by 25% in August could stop nearly 1,700 infections annually
  • Surgical site infections affect 5% of operations in the US and UK at any one time

By

Daisy Dunne For Mailonline


Published:
10:18 EDT, 17 May 2017

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Updated:
10:28 EDT, 17 May 2017

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Patients going under the knife this summer are more at risk of catching a post-surgery infection, new research reveals.

Warm weather increases the risk of surgical site infections, according to a new study.

Researchers found that surgical procedures carried out when temperatures hit 32°C (90°F) or higher are up to 29 percent more likely to end in infection.

The chances of getting an infection are therefore significantly higher in the summer months than the winter, according to the researchers.

Around five percent of people who undergo surgery in the US or the UK at any one time will catch a surgical site infection.

Patients going under the knife this summer are more at risk of catching a bacterial infection

Patients going under the knife this summer are more at risk of catching a bacterial infection

Patients going under the knife this summer are more at risk of catching a bacterial infection

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WHAT ARE SURGICAL SITE INFECTIONS?

Surgical site infections can be a major cause of severe illness or death after surgery, affecting five percent of those that go under the knife in the US and UK.

Most surgical site infections happen when surgical instruments become contaminated by microorganisms.

Contamination usually occurs with microbes from the patient’s own body, rather than an external source of bacteria.

Most infections are preventable if care to prevent contamination is taken before, during and after the surgery.  

Surgical site infections concern healthcare professionals because they lead to an increase in the use of antibiotics and other medications.

Overusing antibiotics raises the chances of antibiotic resistance in the general population.

Source: National Institute for Health and Care Excellence 

Researchers from the University of Iowa used data on millions of patients from the US Nationwide Inpatient Sample to log every adult hospitalization that resulted in a serious site infection from 1998 to 2011.

They then found out what the weather was like around the time of each incident by checking weather stations close to each hospital.

Monthly summary statistics from each station were included in the analysis, including information about temperature, rainfall and wind speed.

Results revealed that temperatures above 32°C (90°F) are associated with a 28.9 percent risk of hospitalization with a surgical site infection compared to temperatures that are less than 4.4°C (40°F). 

They also found that 26.5 percent more surgical infection-related hospitalizations occur in August than in January.

How weather affects surgical infection risk is unexplained.

Study author Professor Philip Polgreen, said: ‘We show that seasonality of surgical site infections is strongly associated with average monthly temperature.’  

The researchers have estimated that cutting back risky surgeries by 25 percent in August could stop nearly 1,700 cases of surgical site infection every year.

The effect of warm weather on the rate of infection was similar regardless of hospital region, patient age groups or genders, they added.

Study author Dr Christopher Anthony, said: ‘These results tell us that we need to identify the patients, surgeries and geographic regions where weather-related variables are most likely to increase patients’ risk for infections after surgery.

‘This way, we can identify the patients at the greatest risk for surgical site infections during warmer summer months.’

This comes after researchers from Duke University in North Carolina revealed that being married can make men more likely to survive surgery, but the same is not true for women. 

Exactly how marriage protects men is unclear. Previous research has shown women have larger social networks than men, who tend to rely solely on their spouse. 

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