NCT03883009: WATUSSI

Understanding the Drivers of Surgical Site Infection: Investigating and Modeling the Swissnoso Surveillance Data

Completed Last updated 27 January 2023

What this trial tests

trial in Surgical Site Infection in 318,000 participants. Completed in 31 October 2022.

Timeline

1 August 2018

Primary endpoint
31 October 2022

31 October 2022

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Insel Gruppe AG, University Hospital Bern
Status	Completed
Study type	OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment	318,000
Start date	1 August 2018
Primary completion	31 October 2022
Estimated completion	31 October 2022
Sites	1 location across Switzerland

Conditions studied

• Surgical Site Infection — all drugs for Surgical Site Infection →

Sponsor

Insel Gruppe AG, University Hospital Bern

Who can join

Eligibility, any sex, with Surgical Site Infection. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Surgical site infection (SSI) is the most common healthcare-associated infection, multifactorial in nature, and a typical preventable harm. Many healthcare systems require hospitals to determine the corresponding infection rates as a quality indicator and often stipulate public reporting of these data. Several agencies, among them the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have issued evidence-based prevention guidelines. Despite efforts in implementing best practice, SSI continue to be a relevant complication of modern surgical procedures and generate enormous costs for the healthcare system. Moreover, prevention guidelines acknowledge that the evidence backing their recommendations is low to moderate in most cases, which is partly due to the complexity of SSI pathogenesis.

Swissnoso, the Swiss expert group for infection prevention and hospital epidemiology, oversees the nationwide collection of data on select procedures and the associated SSI. Since the inception of this dedicated surveillance in 2009, more than 300'000 procedures have been included and the corresponding patients were followed to ascertain SSIs. Although primarily conceived as a national surveillance system and then used for public reporting starting in 2014, Swissnoso is a prime data source for better understanding the epidemiology of SSI.

Here, the investigators seek to raise the quality of evidence behind future prevention guidelines. For this purpose, the investigators will move from a risk factor analysis for SSI (of which a substantial part occurs after patient discharge from the hospital, rendering surveillance difficult) to the collection of additional data (in order to better characterize certain determinants of SSI and their recognition) and, finally, to a mathematical model (which will simulate the probability of developing SSI so the investigators can test what may modulate this risk).

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial. Completed trials usually publish results within 12-18 months.