Surgical Site Infections in Elective Foot and Ankle Surgeries

We retrospectively analyzed the surgical episodes of elective foot and ankle surgeries in our foot center; an orthopedic referral center at the Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, from January 2014 to September 2022. We used data mining from the hospital’s own medical databases and verified the SSI by opening individual electronic files. We included all patients older than 18 years of age with elective foot and ankle surgeries and excluded emergency surgeries understood as any injury that requires immediate medical care [19 (link)], such as open or displaced fractures or surgeries performed for community-acquired or nosocomial infections (gangrene, severe soft tissue infection), and severe ischemia. We divided the cohort into two groups of diabetic and non-diabetic patients. We studied the key variables related to possible risk factors for SSI, including duration of the surgery, type of elective surgery, more than two previous surgeries, surgery with foreign material (osteosynthesis, external material), the ASA score, and the presence of a chronic wound in diabetics. The local ethics committee approved our retrospective study (BASEC 2022-01755). Patients who did not provide their general informed consent upon hospitalisation for surgery were not analyzed.