Postoperative infection rates in foot and ankle surgery: a clinical audit of Australian podiatric surgeons, January to December 2007.

BACKGROUND: Surgical site infections are one of the most common post-operative complications encountered by foot and ankle surgeons. The incidence reported in the literature varies between 0.5 and 6.5%. The results of a 12-month Australia-wide clinical audit analysing the rates of postoperative infections in association with podiatric surgery are presented.

METHODS: De-identified patient data was collected from nine podiatric surgeons Australia-wide. Infections were identified according to Australian Council on Health Care Standards (ACHS) definitions and data was entered no earlier than thirty days post procedure.

RESULTS: A total of 1339 patient admissions and 2387 surgical procedures were reported using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) and Medicare Benefit Schedule (MBS) coding systems. The overall infection rate was 3.1% and the rate of infection resulting in hospital re-admission was 0.25%.

CONCLUSIONS: The benchmark results presented in this paper suggest that infection rates associated with podiatric surgery are well within accepted industry standards as stated in recent literature.