Patient risk assessment

Assessing each patient's risk

Each patient's risk of developing a wound infection can be measured using a risk assessment. There are differences between risk assessments. Some risk assessments give more importance or weight to specific risks, and some include only a few risk factors, whilst others include many factors. Not all assessments are relevant to patients having heart surgery and there is no agreement about which assessment is best. This is a problem because national and international wound infection prevention guidelines recommend giving treatments using antibiotics to patients at high risk of developing an infection rather than all patients.  This is to reduce the risk of bacteria (the bugs which are responsible for causing most infections) developing resistance.

• Risk reduction
• Reducing skin bacteria before surgery
• Surgical interventions to reduce infection risk
• After surgery