Every year, over 4.5 million Europeans suffer from an infection they acquire in a health care setting. Of these, surgical site infections (SSIs) can cause patients to be readmitted to the hospital five times more frequently, increase the likelihood of an ICU visit by sixty percent, and double the risk of death.

To me, the statistics are striking – the impact on patients and health systems is even more profound. In the EU, nosocomial infections lead to about 16 million incremental days in the hospital. In the UK alone, patients that developed infection had 76% higher total direct costs than patients without infection. The good news is that experts estimate that up to 60% of SSIs may be preventable.

Prevention efforts have come a long way: sterile sutures, antiseptic wound treatment, sterilization by irradiation, sterilization with the help of the low-temperature gas plasma, absorbable pads to help minimize blood loss, and antibacterial sutures coated with triclosan. These and other inventions have greatly impacted clinical outcomes, survival rates, infection rates, amputations and lethal cases, as well as surgical efficiency.

In my opinion, a key development in trauma is infection clearance through irrigation. The advancement was enabled by the introduction of a reaming and bone harvesting system that promotes effective washout for IM nail exchange procedures, thereby providing an efficient method for removal of infected bone tissue.

With leading trauma solutions like these, I’ve never been more proud and excited to be part of such a forward-looking orthopaedics sector that continues to build upon a long history of dedication to infection prevention and control, as well as innovation through co-creation in order to keep people moving.