Abstract

Background: Surgical site infection causes serious consequences in patients undergoing arthroplasty and occurres more frequently after bone tumor surgery. Therefore, we implemented surgical site infection bundle and evaluated its effectiveness in major orthopedics.

Methods: A quasi-experimental pre-post intervention study without a control group, including two stages. The baseline data were collected in the pre-intervention stage from October 2021 to June 2022. A surgical site bundle, training, surveillance, and feedback were implemented over the period between July 2022 and December 2024. Research subjects were patients undergoing bone tumor surgery or arthroplasty.

Results: A total of 144 patients met the inclusion criteria in the pre-intervention stage and 380 patients in the intervention stage. The proportion of surgical site infections compliance was 69.2% (263/380) in the intervention stage. The incidence of surgical site infections decreased from 3.5% (5/144) in the pre-intervention stage to 2.1% (8/380) in the intervention stage. The percentage of surgical site infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus declined by 1% in comparison between two stages. The median number of patient days in the intervention stage (7.2) was lower than that in the pre-intervention satge (8.3) and this difference was statistically significant with p = 0.018.

Conclusions: The study did not show a satistically significant difference between the pre-intervention and intervention stages. However, the results suggested that surgical site infection bundle may have contributed to reducing the incidence of surgical site infection and the average number of patient days in major orthopedics including bone tumor surgery and arthroplasty.