Less than 1 CFU/m~3 in a crowded operating theatre, during a real surgery

摘要

Have you ever tried to open your preferred web search engine, type keywords such as "hospital acquired infections", "surgical site infections", "HAI survey" and then press "Enter"? If you have, you know the tremendous impact these infections have on the healthcare system, even now in the 21st century, in terms of longer hospitalization, stress to the patients, direct and indirect costs and causes of death. At the same time, the current trend worldwide is to reduce the number of beds in hospitals, despite the continuous growth of population and the longer expectations of life. It is easy to understand that the only way to achieve this goal is to reduce as much as possible the days' stay in hospital. Among all the enclosed workplaces in healthcare premises, the operating room is one of the most critical for the risk of acquiring infections.