Infect Chemother.  2007 Dec;39(6):287-291.

Infectious Disease Consultations from Surgical Departments in a University Hospital

• Eom JS
• Song JY
• Cheong HJ
• Kim WJ

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Infections are usually related to the surgical patients prognosis. Therefore consultations from surgical departments to division of infectious diseases are considered very important in the aspect of improvement of surgical outcomes and control of hospital infection. This study was conducted to analyze the results of infectious disease consultation from surgical departments.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
We retrospectively reviewed 624 cases of consultation to division of infectious diseases from surgical departments from March to August in the year of 2002.
RESULTS
Among 624 cases, 610 were included; 292 cases (47.9%) were new and 318 cases (52.1%) were follow-up requests. More than 50% of consultations were from the department of neurosurgery and orthopedics. Overall, 558 cases (91.4%) were about infection-related conditions, and among them, common causes were soft tissue infection, respiratory tract infection, and urinary tract infection. However, those results were remarkably variable according to each surgical department. The measures taken after consultations were change of antibiotics (35.6%), maintenance of antibiotics (18.4%), discontinuance of antibiotics (10%), start of antibiotics (9.2%), and observation without antibiotics (4.3%).
CONCLUSION
This is the report on analysis of infectious disease consultation from surgical departments. Through the analysis of consultations we expect to enable more efficient care of patients and infection control.

Keyword

Infectious diseases consultation; Surgical departments

MeSH Terms

Anti-Bacterial Agents
Communicable Diseases*
Cross Infection
Follow-Up Studies
Humans
Infection Control
Neurosurgery
Orthopedics
Prognosis
Referral and Consultation*
Respiratory Tract Infections
Retrospective Studies
Soft Tissue Infections
Urinary Tract Infections
Anti-Bacterial Agents