The study authors examined surgical records for spinal fusions performed from January 2010 to July 2012. They studied more than 1,000 consecutive patients and found:
1. Twenty SSIs occurred, a 1.7 percent infection rate.
2. There was a significant association between the anesthetic time and infection rate. The patients who reported infections were more likely under anesthesia for 7.6 hours on average, compared with six hours for the patients who didn’t report infections.
3. Increased operative time was also associated with higher infection risk. The patients who contracted SSI reported average operative times of 5.5 hours, compared to 4.4 hours for the patients who didn’t have SSI.
4. The pathology level and designation as emergency surgery didn’t affect the SSI risk.
5. Independent predictors of SSI were the patient’s BMI and total anesthetic time; the ASA and operative time were not independent predictors of SSI based on the multivariate logistic analysis.
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