ABSTRACT
CONTENTS 19.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 459 19.2 Risk Factors.............................................................................................. 460 19.3 Prevention ................................................................................................ 461 References ........................................................................................................... 463
Infectious complications are the main causes of postoperative morbidity in abdominal surgery [1]. These complications have an important financial cost and are responsible for significant morbidity [2,3]. In order to reduce these complications, it is important to establish the risk factors that increase their incidence. Identification of risk factors in the perioperative period would possibly allow decreasing the rate of postoperative infectious complications. Antibiotic prophylaxis is one of the different procedures to reduce postoperative infectious complications. Controversy still persists concerning the efficacy of antibiotic prophylaxis in clean abdominal surgery (stratum 1) [4] and concerning which specific antibiotic to use [5]. Since 1992, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [6] has modified the definition of surgical wound infection using the term of surgical site infection (SSI), which includes parietal and deep infectious complications. There are few studies reported in the literature taking into account global postoperative infectious complications including extra parietal abdominal infectious complications (urinary infections, intravascular catheter infections, lung infections, and late infections). The risk factors for global infectious complications and for SSI may be different [7].
