Objective: We evaluated the incidence, risk factors and consequences of wound infection (WI) following major head and neck cancer surgery in an open non-comparative study.
Patients and methods: The study group, comprising 95 patients who underwent clean-contaminated procedures with opening of the upper aerodigestive tract for biopsy-proven squamous cell cancer, were studied over a 1-year period. Antibiotic prophylaxis was amoxicillin and clavulanic acid. More than 20 variables were prospectively recorded for each patient. The mean follow-up was 30 months.
Main results: The overall WI rate was 50.5% (48/95). Most pathogens isolated from samples were gram-negative rods. In univariate analysis, we found three risk factors for WI: alcohol consumption (P = 0.07), a hypopharyngeal location (P = 0.02) and laryngectomy stoma (P = 0.01). WI were associated with postoperative fever (P = l.5 x 10(-11)), postoperative antibiotic therapy (P = 1.5 x 10(-5)) and postoperative death (P = 0.043). Patients without WI had a median postoperative hospital stay of 15 days compared with 29 days for those with WI (P < 0.001). Healing of WI was achieved after a median time of 48 days. WI delayed postoperative radiation therapy in 21 out of 33 evaluable patients. But overall survival, and local and metastatic failures were similar with and without WI.
Conclusions: WI are associated with a heavy postoperative morbidity, but have no prognostic impact on cancer control.