Infectious Disease Consultations from Surgical Departments in a University Hospital / 감염과화학요법

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.