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1/22/08

Breast cancer Surgery - Infection Rate is 5.3%
Reuters January 22, 2008

More than one in 20 patients undergoing breast surgery later developed infections at incision sites, according to a new study, a complication that was more common than thought.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the infection rate following breast removal surgery at 2%, although earlier surveys put it at anywhere between 1% and 28%.

In the two-year study published in this month's issue of the Archives of Surgery, 5.3%, or 50, of nearly 950 patients developed infections within a year of their procedures, inside and outside the hospital. The average time between surgery and infection was 47 days.

"The surgical site infection rates following breast surgery seem to be much greater than the nationally reported incidence of 2% and much higher than what is expected for clean surgical procedures," Margaret Olsen of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis wrote in her report.

The cost of follow-up medical care was put by the study at roughly $4,000 a patient.

Roughly one in eight women in the study who had a cancerous breast removed and then underwent breast reconstruction with an implant developed an infection. The infection rate was 7% among those who had breast reconstruction using tissue from the abdomen, where infections also struck. Infections occurred in 4% of women having a mastectomy, and among 1% of those having breast-reduction surgery.

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