Measures of Safe Care Menu
When someone has surgery, he or she might get an infection where the surgery happened. This is known as a surgical site infection (SSI). These infections can happen up to 30 days after the operation. To prevent these, doctors and nurses follow best practices for taking care of patients before, during, and after the surgery. The only SSIs that get reported publicly are those after specific types of surgeries, like removing the uterus or doing colon surgery.
What is UAB Medicine doing to help?
Many SSIs can be stopped by following special guidelines, including these recommendations from the CDC:
- Patients should use special soap to wash their bodies the night before their surgery.
- Doctors can give patients antibiotics through an IV. This is done at the right time and only if it’s really needed.
- Before surgery, doctors clean the patient’s skin with alcohol-based cleaners.
- Keeping the patient’s blood sugar levels stable is very important.
UAB Medicine follows all of these important steps to help keep patients safe from infections after their surgery.