Risk Factors for Surgical Site Infection in Head and Neck Cancer

Abstract

\n Purpose\n\nSurgical site infection (SSI) frequently occurs in patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) after tumor resection and can lead to death in severe cases. Moreover, there is no definitive conclusion about the risk factors of SSI. Therefore, it is of great clinical significance to study the factors affecting the SSI.\nMethods\n\n The HNC patients included in this study were all from the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery of the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University (CSU), and these patients received surgical treatment in the department from January 2018 to December 2019. Univariate and multivariate regression analysis was applied to determine the risk factors of SSI. To identify the key risk factors of SSI, the caret package was used to construct three different machine learning models to investigate important features involving 26 SSI-related risk factors.\nResults\n\nParticipants were 632 HNC patients who underwent surgery in our department from January 2018 to December 2019. During the postoperative period, 82 patients suffered from SSI and surgical site infection rate (SSIR) was about 12.97%. Diabetes mellitus, tumor site (floor of mouth) and flap failure were consistently ranked the top three in the 26 SSI-related risk factors. In addition, SSI can increase postoperative hospital stays and flap failure rate.\nConclusion\n\nDiabetes mellitus, tumor site (floor of mouth), flap failure, preoperative radiotherapy, neck dissection (bilateral) are risk factors for SSI of HNC.