Clinical characteristics
Among the active co-morbid conditions at the time of
enrollment (Figure 1), diabetes was the most common in
each infection type, followed by peripheral vascular disease
and renal insufficiency. As shown in Figure 2, 73.6%
of patients had at least one healthcare associated risk
factor, the most common of which were hospitalization
within the past 6 months and antibiotic use within the
past 30 days. Although by definition all SSI cases should
be healthcare-associated, we only identified 94.2% as
such based on our operational definition, which might
miss some cases where the related surgery was performed
in an outpatient setting or beyond 6 months.