About Surgical Site Infections
Preventing Surgical Site Infections
Preventing Surgical Site Infections with Collatamp G
Talk to Your Doctor
Preventing Surgical Site Infections
Surgical site infections can develop after you've had surgery. They can cause dangerous complications, so it's important for you and your healthcare team to do everything you reasonably can to prevent them.
How Can I Help Prevent Surgical Site Infections?
Before and after surgery, there are things you can do to help prevent surgical site infections.
Have an updated list of all medications you take—including vitamins and herbal supplements—and share it with your surgeon and nurses.
Before your surgery, you should tell your surgeon about anything that might put you at additional risk for developing an infection. Be sure to tell your surgeon if you:
- Feel like you're getting a cold or the flu
- Smoke
- Are diabetic
- Haven't been eating well, or don't follow a balanced diet
On the day or night before your surgery:
- Don't shave the area where surgery will be performed—this can irritate your skin and make it vulnerable to infection. Check with your surgeon or nurse at your pre-op appointment to see if shaving your face is OK.
- Keep warm. Being cold has been associated with a higher risk of developing surgical infections. Wear warm clothes going to the hospital, and if it's cold outside, be sure to heat up your car before you get in.
How Do My Surgeon and Surgical Team Prevent Surgical Site Infections?
There are many things your surgeon and the surgical team do to help prevent surgical site infections.
These include:
- Giving you antibiotics before and after your surgery
- Scrubbing their hands and arms with antimicrobial soap before surgery
- Wearing special masks, gowns and hair covers
- Cleaning your skin with antimicrobial soap
- Monitoring your blood glucose levels and body temperature during surgery
To help prevent surgical site infections, most hospitals now use clippers instead of razors to remove hair from the surgical area.
Collatamp G—A New Breakthrough in Preventing Surgical Site Infections
Even with these precautions, surgical site infections are still the third most common form of hospital-acquired infection, causing further sickness and prolonged hospital stays.
This is because certain parts of the body, such as the stomach, chest, bones and intestines, are naturally more vulnerable to developing an infection following surgery.
A surgical site infection can mean a longer stay in the hospital.
You may need to be in intensive care.
You may have to undergo surgery again.
And with a serious infection, death can occur.
In fact, 80% of all post-operative deaths occur in high-risk patients.
Fortunately, if you're at high risk of developing a surgical site infection, or are undergoing potentially high-risk surgery, Canadian surgeons and nurses now have a new medical device to help them dramatically reduce surgical site infections—Collatamp G.
In addition to the standard measures already discussed, this breakthrough medical product is placed directly into the wound during your surgery and helps prevent surgical site infections by delivering a high dose of powerful antibiotic directly at the site of infection risk.
It then dissolves into the body, helps stop bleeding and promotes accelerated wound healing.
You can think of Collatamp G as a highly targeted or "laser-sighted" approach versus the "shotgun" approach taken with intravenous antibiotics. While it doesn't replace systemic intravenous antibiotics, Collatamp G provides high-risk patients with a much greater degree of surgical site infection prevention.
Collatamp G has been used safely for almost 20 years around the world in over two million patients, with no adverse events reported.
Follow the link to learn more about preventing surgical site infections with Collatamp G.
