Published online Nov 26, 2023. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v11.i33.8013
Peer-review started: August 14, 2023
First decision: October 9, 2023
Revised: October 19, 2023
Accepted: November 2, 2023
Article in press: November 2, 2023
Published online: November 26, 2023
Processing time: 101 Days and 20 Hours
Surgical site infection (SSI) is one of the most common complications after gastric cancer (GC) surgery. The occurrence of SSI has an adverse impact on the prognosis of patients. There are very few studies that focus on the effect of subcutaneous fat thickness (SFT) and abdominal depth (AD) on postoperative SSI.
In this study, the authors sought to identify ways to assist clinicians in the early identification and treatment of postoperative SSI after GC surgery.
To explore the potential relationship between SFT or AD and SSI in patients after elective radical resection of GC.
Demographic, clinical, and pre- and intraoperative information of 355 patients who had undergone elective radical resection of GC were retrospectively collected from hospital electronic medical records. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to screen for the risk factors contributing to SSI incidence. Furthermore, the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve method was employed to evaluate the predictive power and best cutoff value for the biomarkers under consideration.
The prevalence of SSI was 11.27% (40/355). Multivariate analyses revealed that SFT, AD, laparoscopic-assisted surgery, and operation time were independently associated with the incidence of SSI after elective radical resection of GC. The area under the ROC curve values of SFT, AD, and the product of SFT and AD (SFT × AD) were 0.770 [95% confidence interval (95%CI): 0.700–0.839], 0.715 (95%CI: 0.635–0.795), and 0.810 (95%CI: 0.740–0.879), respectively.
Our results suggest that preoperative SFT, AD, and operation time are independent risk factors for SSI after GC surgery, while laparoscopic-assisted surgery is a protective factor. In addition, SFT × AD is a better potential predictor of SSI in these patients than either SFT or AD alone.
In the future, we will increase the sample size used to construct the model and conduct a multicenter study.