Surgical Site Infections

Our skin is one of the best lines of defense against germs coming into the body. Any surgery that causes a break in the skin increases the risk of germs getting into the body and causing an infection. When this happens it is called a surgical site infection. At Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, we do our best to prevent infection after every type of surgery. We focus on preventing infections after three types of high-risk procedures: cardiac (heart) surgeries, spinal fusion surgeries, and ventricular shunt surgeries.

How Do We Prevent Surgical Site Infections?

There are important steps we take to prevent surgical site infections, such as:

  • Giving patients preventive antibiotics before surgery
  • Using a special anti-germ skin cleanser treatment called chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) to reduce the number of germs on the skin
  • Keeping a sterile environment in our procedure rooms
  • We participate in Solutions for Patient Safety, a group of children’s hospitals that learns from and teaches each other how to reduce surgical site infections.

How Are We Doing?

Our team is dedicated to making sure that patients don’t develop infections after surgeries. We keep track of how we are doing with the number of high-risk surgical site infections we have throughout the year. The graph below shows our high-risk surgical site infection rate, which means the number of infections we observed after cardiac, spinal fusion and ventricular shunt procedures divided by the number of surgeries we performed.

A line graph detailing biannual surgical site infection rates, meaning the number of infections observed divided by the number of surgeries performed, at CHLA. The rate was 2.52 in Q1-Q2 of 2023; 2.07 in Q3-Q4 of 2023; and 1.02 in Q1-Q2 of 2024.

What You Can Do to Help

Patients and families are an important part of the care team. They play a role in lowering the risk of surgical site infections. If your child is having a cardiac, spinal fusion or ventricular shunt procedure, you will be asked to help give your child a bath the night before their procedure with special chlorhexidine gluconate (CGH) wipes. These wipes help kill germs on the skin that can lead to infection.