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Patient Self-Assessment of Surgical Site Infection is Inaccurate

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Abstract

Background

Availability of surgical site infection (SSI) surveillance rates challenges clinicians, healthcare administrators and leaders and the public. The purpose of this report is to demonstrate the consequences patient self-assessment strategies have on SSI reporting rates.

Methods

We performed SSI surveillance among patients undergoing general surgery procedures, including telephone follow-up 30 days after surgery. Additionally we undertook a separate validation study in which we compared patient self-assessments of SSI with surgeon assessment. Finally, we performed a meta-analysis of similar validation studies of patient self-assessment strategies.

Results

There were 22/266 in-hospital SSIs diagnosed (8.3%), and additional 16 cases were detected through the 30-day follow-up. In total, the SSI rate was 16.8% (95% CI 10.1–18.5). In the validation survey, we found patient telephone surveillance to have a sensitivity of 66% (95% CI 40–93%) and a specificity of 90% (95% CI 86–94%). The meta-analysis included five additional studies. The overall sensitivity was 83.3% (95% CI 79–88%), and the overall specificity was 97.4% (95% CI 97–98%). Simulation of the meta-analysis results divulged that when the true infection rate is 1%, reported rates would be 4%; a true rate of 50%, the reported rates would be 43%.

Conclusion

Patient self-assessment strategies in order to fulfill 30-day SSI surveillance misestimate SSI rates and lead to an erroneous overall appreciation of inter-institutional variation. Self-assessment strategies overestimate SSIs rate of institutions with high-quality performance and underestimate rates of poor performance. We propose such strategies be abandoned. Alternative strategies of patient follow-up strategies should be evaluated in order to provide valid and reliable information regarding institutional performance in preventing patient harm.

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Author notes

    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Center for Clinical Quality and Safety, Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, POB 12000, 91120, Jerusalem, Israel

      Vered Richter, Matan J. Cohen & Mayer Brezis

    2. Department of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel

      Matan J. Cohen & Shmuel Benenson

    3. Surgery Department, Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel

      Gideon Almogy

    Authors
    1. Vered Richter
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    2. Matan J. Cohen
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    3. Shmuel Benenson
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    4. Gideon Almogy
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    5. Mayer Brezis
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    Correspondence to Matan J. Cohen.

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    Vered Richter and Matan J. Cohen have contributed equally to this work.

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    Richter, V., Cohen, M.J., Benenson, S. et al. Patient Self-Assessment of Surgical Site Infection is Inaccurate. World J Surg 41, 1935–1942 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00268-017-3974-y

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00268-017-3974-y

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