Major Article
AMBU-KISS: Quality control in ambulatory surgery

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2004.09.004Get rights and content

Background

Cost-containment measures have led to a constant increase in the number of patients cared for as outpatients. Several studies have demonstrated that surgical site infections result in considerable morbidity and excess health care costs from extended duration of hospitalization and antibiotic use.

Objective

AMBU-KISS is a protocol designed to create a reference database on surgical site infections for institutions involved in ambulatory surgery.

Methods

This study was carried out using a physician questionnaire. We compared surgical site infection rates for 3 indicator procedures in the ambulatory setting to those observed in the inpatient setting. The 3 indicator procedures chosen for the protocol were arthroscopic knee surgery and inguinal hernia and vein-stripping procedures.

Results

The arithmetic mean values of surgical site infection rates in arthroscopic surgery of the knee are 0.09% in the ambulatory setting and 0.11% in the hospital setting. For inguinal hernias, the respective rates are 0.65% and 0.78%. These differences, however, did not reach statistical significance (arthroscopic surgery, P = .8323 and inguinal herniotomies, P = .4895). A marked difference was observed for vein-stripping procedures, with surgical site infection rates of 0.38% in the ambulatory setting and 0.64% in the hospital setting. However, this difference was also not statistically significant, P = .1556.

Conclusion

The AMBU-KISS protocol appears to be suitable for assessing and defining the magnitude of surgical site infections in ambulatory surgery. The preliminary results of our study show no significant differences for the 3 indicator procedures.

Section snippets

Methods

The AMBU-KISS module was designed and implemented in October 2002. At present, the protocol includes 3 indicator surgical procedures, ie, arthroscopic knee surgery, inguinal herniotomy (with and without implants), and vein stripping. These were chosen because a preliminary assessment of the situation showed that, in the majority of institutions, these were the procedures carried out most frequently on an ambulatory basis. Furthermore, a reference database for these indicator procedures had

Results

After a relatively short study period of 9 months (October 2002 to June 2003), 16,045 surgical procedures were available for analysis. Stratification showed that 52 institutions submitted data on 7931 arthroscopic knee surgery procedures, 53 institutions on 3094 inguinal herniotomy, and 50 institutions on 5020 vein-stripping procedures. An infection rate of 0.09% (7/7931) was observed in the subgroup arthroscopic knee surgery. Corresponding values for inguinal herniotomy and vein-stripping

Discussion

In recent years, health care cost containment has led, among other things, to the introduction of ambulatory surgery as part of patient management. In various medical fields, a growing number of patients are now cared for on an outpatient basis. Thus, it appears logical that the quality standards of these institutions should be scrutinized and, if necessary, improved. Quality standards have been established for the hospital setting, and individual hospitals can use reference databases to assess

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