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If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. Male sex is controversially discussed as a risk factor for surgical site infections SSI. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of sex on SSI in abdominal surgery under elimination of relevant confounders.
Clinicopathological data of patients undergoing abdominal surgery from a multi-center prospective database of four Swiss hospitals including patients between and were assessed. Patients were stratified according to postoperative SSI and risk factors for SSI were identified using univariate and multivariate analysis.
In of patients, SSI was reported 9. SSI was significantly associated with reoperation Under elimination of relevant confounders, there is no significant correlation between sex and risk of SSI after abdominal surgery. Surgical site infections SSI rank among the three most frequent healthcare-associated infections in Europe [ 1 ]. In the past, multiple patient- and surgery-related factors contributing to the development of SSI were identified including age, body mass index BMI , and duration of surgery [ 6 — 10 ].
Recently, sex was intensively discussed as a possible risk factor for SSI as several studies reported increased SSI rates for men [ 11 — 15 ]. For instance, two high volume studies analyzing data from German Nosocomial Infections Surveillance reported significantly higher incidence of SSI among men in different procedures including abdominal surgery [ 11 , 12 ]. However, one study was unadjusted for any confounders [ 11 ] and in the other important potential confounders as comorbidities including obesity and malnutrition could not be included into the analysis [ 12 ].
