Title: Surgical Site Infection – Relevance of Preoperative Assessment of Albumin and Cholesterol

Authors: Dr Nowshad.M, Dr C.V.Rajendran, Dr Jameela Beevi

 DOI:  https://dx.doi.org/10.18535/jmscr/v5i7.48

Abstract

Background: Surgical site infection is a serious problem affecting about 2% of all surgical procedure. Advances in surgical sciences and care has not reduced the prevalence to such an extent. Various risk factors like Age, nutritional status, diabetes, smoking, obesity, altered immune status were reported in literature. There are a few reports in the literature about the role for measurements of preoperative albumin and cholesterol. However there is a lack of such studies in our settings. We set out to study whether there is an association between the preoperative levels of albumin and cholesterol with postoperative surgical site infection.

Methods: We conducted this prospective cohort study in patients who underwent various surgeries in our institution after getting informed consent. Apart from the basic demographic profile, preoperative levels of albumin and cholesterol were measured along with preoperative, anesthetic and perioperative details. All statistical analysis was done in R statistical software.

Results: The mean ± SD age of patients was 53.1 ± 18.1 years (range 10-92 years) and 15.5% developed nosocomial infection. Hypoalbuminemia was present in 87(33%)of the patients. Hypoalbuminemia was found to be associated with SSI with a relative risk of 1.98 and confidence interval of 1.07 to 3.61. High cholesterol levels were found in 87 patients with 3(1%) only having SSI.

Discussion: In this study, we observed that there was a positive association between Hypoalbuminemia and SSI which was statistically significant. Hence routine measurement of serum albumin and cholesterol at the time of admission will help in proper optimization of surgical patients so that potential SSI could be reduced.

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Corresponding Author

Dr C.V.Rajendran

Additional Professor, Department of Surgery,

Government Medical College, Trivandrum