Tschudin-Sutter et al reviewed the potential role of surgical drains in surgical site infections. They described as incidence density of drainage days to quantify this variable. The authors are from University Hospital Basel in Switzerland.
In general the risk of infection increases with:
(1) the longer the drains are in place.
(2) the number of drains
incidence density of drainage days =
= (number of drains in situ) * (number of days with drainage)
where:
• The actual text is “number of drainages multiplied by the number of drainages in situ” but something seems to have been lost in translation.
Since some drains may be pulled sooner than others the score has to take varying numbers into account.
One option is to tally the number of drains per day over the post-operative period. A second option is to calculate the number of hours that each drain was in place.
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