Podcast: Raising Awareness about Preventing Surgical Site Infections
A conversation between Karen Jagoda of Empowered Patient Podcasts and Dr. Antonia Chen, the Director of Research for the Division of Adult Reconstruction and a surgeon performing total joint arthroplasty in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
In addition to informing surgeons and other healthcare professionals about ways to avoid surgical site infections, Dr. Chen emphasizes there is also a need to educate patients about preoperative actions to optimize them for surgery.
Antonia explains, "Surgical site infections unfortunately still plague us today, and they basically are infections that happen after surgery. It can happen in any patient and after any surgery. There are some surgeries that have a higher likelihood of it and some surgeries that don't. What happens is that after we make a cut through the skin due to surgery, the bacteria on your skin that is natural can actually get into your wound and potentially cause a surgical site infection or SSI."
"It's really nice to have something inside the wound to prevent the bacteria from growing. So Ethicon has a Plus Antibacterial suture, and it is the only commercially available suture that can prevent persistent risk from surgical infection by reducing the risk of infection."
"I really appreciate Ethicon for putting together a campaign they call Zero Starts With One. The idea is that we want to go to zero surgical site infections, and it starts with one person at a time, one prevention at a time, one patient, one healthcare provider at a time."