Postoperative spine infections

Postoperative spinal wound infection is a potentially devastating complication after operative spinal procedures. Despite the uti- lization of perioperative prophylactic antibi- otics in recent years and improvements in sur- gical technique and postoperative care, wound infection continues to compromise patients’ outcome after spinal surgery. In the modern era of pending health care reform with increasing financial constraints, the financial burden of post-operative spinal infections also deserves consideration. The aim of our work is to give to the reader an updated review of the latest achievements in prevention, risk factors, diagnosis, microbiology and treatment of post- operative spinal wound infections. A review of the scientific literature was carried out using electronic medical databases Pubmed, Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus for the years 1973-2012 to obtain access to all publica- tions involving the incidence, risk factors, pre- vention, diagnosis, treatment of postoperative spinal wound infections. We initially identified 119 studies; of these 60 were selected. Despite all the measures intended to reduce the inci- dence of surgical site infections in spine sur- gery, these remain a common and potentially dangerous complication.