What is new in the diagnosis and prevention of spine surgical site infections.

BACKGROUND CONTEXT: Surgical site infection (SSI) after spinal surgery can result in several serious secondary complications, such as pseudoarthrosis, neurological injury, paralysis, sepsis, and death. There is an increasing body of literature on risk factors, diagnosis, and specific intraoperative interventions, including attention to sterility of instrumentation, application of minimally invasive fusion techniques, intraoperative irrigation, and application of topical antibiotics, that hold the most promise for reduction of SSI.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this review is to identify and summarize the recent literature on the incidence, risk factors, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of SSIs after adult spine surgery.

STUDY DESIGN: The study design included systematic review and literature synthesis.

METHODS: For the systematic reviews, a search was performed in Medline and Scopus using keywords derived from a preliminary review of the literature and Medline MeSH terms. These studies were then manually filtered to meet the study criteria outlined in each section. Studies were excluded via predetermined criteria, and the majority of articles reviewed were excluded.

RESULTS: There are a number of patient- and procedure-specific risk factors for SSI. Surgical site infection appears to have significant implications from the patients' perspective on outcome of care. Diagnosis of SSI appears to rely primarily on clinical factors, while laboratory values such as C-reactive protein are not universally sensitive. Similarly, novel methods of perioperative infection prophylaxis such as local antibiotic administration appear to be modestly effective.

CONCLUSIONS: Surgical site infections are a common multifactorial problem after spine surgery. There is compelling evidence that improved risk stratification, detection, and prevention will reduce SSIs.