Title

Postoperative wound dehiscence: Predictors and associations.

Authors

Victoria K. Shanmugam, George Washington UniversityFollow
Stephen J. Fernandez
Karen Kim Evans
Sean McNish, George Washington University
Anirban N. Banerjee, George Washington University
Kara S. Couch, George Washington UniversityFollow
Mihriye Mete
Nawar Shara

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

3-1-2015

Journal

Wound Repair and Regeneration

Volume

23

Issue

2

Inclusive Pages

184-190

DOI

10.1111/wrr.12268

Keywords

Comorbidity; Surgical Wound Dehiscence--diagnosis; Wound Healing

Abstract

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (ARHQ) patient safety indicators (PSI) were developed as a metric of hospital complication rates. PSI-14 measures postoperative wound dehiscence and specifically how often a surgical wound in the abdominal or pelvic area fails to heal after abdominopelvic surgery. Wound dehiscence is estimated to occur in 0.5–3.4% of abdominopelvic surgeries, and carries a mortality of up to 40%. Postoperative wound dehiscence has been adopted as a surrogate safety outcome measure since it impacts morbidity, length of stay, healthcare costs and readmission rates. Postoperative wound dehiscence cases from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample demonstrate 9.6% excess mortality, 9.4 days of excess hospitalization and $40,323 in excess hospital charges relative to matched controls.

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the associations between PSI-14 and measurable medical and surgical co-morbidities by using the Explorys technology platform to query electronic health record (EHR) data from a large hospital system serving a diverse patient population in the Washington DC and Baltimore, MD metropolitan areas. The study population included 25,636 eligible patients who had undergone abdominopelvic surgery between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2012. Of these cases, 786 (2.97%) had post-operative wound dehiscence. Patient-associated co-morbidities were strongly associated with PSI-14, suggesting that this indicator may not solely be an indicator of hospital safety. There was a strong association between PSI-14 and opioid use after surgery and this finding merits further investigation.

Comments

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APA Citation

Shanmugam, V. K., Fernandez, S. J., Evans, K. K., McNish, S., Banerjee, A. N., Couch, K. S., . . . Shara, N. (2015). Postoperative wound dehiscence: Predictors and associations. Wound Repair and Regeneration, 23(2), 184-190. doi:10.1111/wrr.12268

Peer Reviewed

1

Open Access

1