The Prevalence and Surveillance of Surgical Site Infections in South Africa: A Literature Review

Surgical site infection is a post-operative complication, which has a significant clinical impact on the affected individual as well as the healthcare system. They are associated with poor outcomes such as increased length of hospital stay, morbidity, mortality and readmissions. As a result, surgical site infections are used as an indicator of the quality of surgical care and for benchmarking. The aim of the review is to gain insight on the current prevalence/incidence and surveillance of surgical site infection in South Africa. The objective was to determine the surgical site infection rate associated with Maxillo-facial and Oral Surgery procedures. A literature review was conducted with the search strategy limited to articles published in English with no limitation to the period. Fifteen articles were deemed eligible for the review according to the inclusion criteria. Eleven articles focused on the epidemiology of surgical site infection in South Africa. The surgical site infection rate varies from 0.65-48% with heterogeneity in the characteristics of the surveillance programmes. The review showed variability in the SSI rates with similar variability in the incidence of surgical site infection as reported on sub-Saharan and African countries (7.93, 9.3, 19.1, 14.5% respectively). The above information was gleaned from institutional point/period prevalence or incidences due to a lack of an integrated national surveillance programme. Thus, there is an urgent necessity to establish an integrated national surveillance programme to facilitate monitoring as well as prevention of surgical site infection in South Africa.