Infections at the incision site occurred in more than 5 percent of patients following breast surgery and cost them more than $4,000 each in hospital-related expenses, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Reported surgical site infection rates following mastectomy (surgical removal of the breast) and other breast procedures range from 1 percent to 28 percent, according to background information in the article. “Given the state of fiscal constraints within the U.S. health care system, it is important to calculate the cost-effectiveness of infection control interventions to justify their use from an economic perspective,” the authors write. “Cost-effectiveness analyses require accurate estimates for the attributable costs of hospital-acquired infections, which are lacking for surgical site infections.”
