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Volume 12, Number 5—May 2006
Dispatch

Costs of Surgical Site Infections That Appear after Hospital Discharge

Nicholas Graves*†Comments to Author , Kate Halton*†, Merrilyn Curtis*, Shane Doidge*, David Lairson‡, Marylou McLaws§, and Michael Whitby*
Author affiliations: *The Centre for Healthcare Related Infection Surveillance and Prevention, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; †Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; ‡University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas, USA; §University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Main Article

Table 1

Demographic characteristics of included patients by surgical site infection (SSI)

Characteristic % (no.)
No SSI (n = 411) SSI (n = 38)
Age, y, mean (SD) 63.58 (14.41) 64.37 (13.72)
Socioeconomic score (1–100),* mean (SD) 35.67 (19.17) 40.37 (20.53)
Male 48.66 (199) 57.89 (22)
Recruiting hospital
280-bed district hospital 35.04 (144) 47.37 (18)
712-bed teaching hospital 47.45 (195) 36.84 (14)
156-bed district hospital 16.79 (69) 15.79 (6)
Income
Currently in waged employment 20.68 (85) 31.58 (12)
<$50,000/y 12.41 (51) 23.68 (9)
>$50,000/y 2.68 (11) 5.26 (2)
Refused to answer 5.35 (22) 2.63 (1)
Education
Left school at <15 y 60.83 (250) 63.16 (24)
Left school at 16–18 y 7.54 (31) 13.16 (5)
Some form of higher education 30.41 (125) 23.68 (9)
Ethnicity
Caucasian 96.11 (395) 97.37 (37)
Aboriginal 0.24 (1) 0.00 (0)
Asian 0.24 (1) 0.00 (0)
Other 2.43 (10) 2.63 (1)
How patient was funded
Public 91.97 (378) 94.74 (36)
Intermediate 6.81 (28) 5.26 (2)
Private 0.24 (1) 0.00 (0)

*See Jones and McMillan (14) for the scoring algorithm used.

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