Breast surgery – preventing wound infection

This research was completed on 31 December 2005

Project Leader	Professor D J Leaper MD, ChM, FRCS, Mr A C Melling and Dr E A Baker
Location	Professorial Unit of Surgery, University Hospital of North Tees, Stockton on Tees
Grant awarded	10 November 2003
Start date	1 January 2004
End date	31 December 2005
Grant amount	£81,888.00
Grant code	AP0978

Wound infection after surgery is still a major cause of ill health and patient suffering. Breast surgery following the diagnosis of cancer can be a devastating life event for any patient and wound healing complications can only increase the trauma and suffering. After breast surgery, the incidence of infection might be as high as 18%. Traditionally, antibiotics are given during surgery to reduce the risk of infection but their effects have been shown to be limited in breast surgery. It is also important to investigate alternatives to antibiotics as bacteria are becoming resistant to these drugs. A new alternative that has proved successful in a few early studies is the use of patient warming.This research team will compare the use of antibiotics with warming on the rate of wound infection after breast surgery and it is hoped that this study will demonstrate that patient warming is a realistic alternative.