Surgical site infections following knee replacement surgery

A surgical site infection (SSI) can occur in a part of the body where surgery was performed. Many types of SSIs may occur.

Affected patients will often have a longer stay in hospital or be readmitted to hospital for the infection to be treated. They require antibiotics to treat the infection and sometimes require further surgery.

Surgical site infections are preventable. Hospital teams can put robust infection prevention measures plans in place, and patients can take simple actions prior to surgery such as reducing smoking or better managing their diabetes.

In WA public hospitals, we implement a robust range of protocols, processes and reviews to keep patients safe. These include taking thorough medical history including sharing clinical information pre- and post-operation.

Closely monitoring patients who have surgery and identifying patients who get a surgical site infection can help improve care and lower infection rates.

Hospital leadership teams and clinicians share this information to continuously improve infection prevention, to keep patients safe. 

These data indicate that WA has a very low rate of surgical site infections after knee replacements.

About the data

In WA, all hospitals where hip and knee replacements are performed are required to submit data to the Healthcare Infection Surveillance WA (HISWA) program.

The data below is drawn from all patients who had a knee replacement in a public hospital in WA in the given financial year. Only data for primary operations (i.e. the first time the replacement was done) is shown.

The infection rate is calculated by dividing the number of patients who had a knee replacement by the number of patients who had an infection at the site of the operation. In the figure below, the surgical site infection rate for every 100 knee replacement operations is shown.

A comparable rate published in the Public Health England Surveillance of Surgical Site Infections in NHS hospitals in England, 2022-23 Report (external site), is shown.

The data includes both patients whose infection was detected when they were still in hospital, and those who returned to hospital after discharge because of a surgical site infection