Johnson & Johnson MedTech, a surgical technologies and solutions company, joined leading surgeons from around the world to initiate a standardized classification system for the global evaluation and reporting of surgical site outcomes (SSOs). Experts from across surgical specialties and healthcare disciplines aim to develop a standardized approach for surgeons and wound care teams to more fully capture the scope and incidence of postoperative complications, enabling improved approaches to prevention.
Wound complications including infections, bleeding, wound reopenings, and fluid collections result in a significant burden for patients and global healthcare systems. Despite the prevalence of these complications in perioperative care, post-operative wound outcomes are underreported, and there is currently no comprehensive global standard for defining and monitoring.
Building on the company’s more than 135 years of leadership in surgery and significant work in reducing surgical site infections (SSIs), Johnson & Johnson MedTech is joining the effort to better define and standardize the evaluation of SSOs and measure the associated outcomes.
Expanding beyond SSIs: addressing adverse Surgical Site Outcomes
Complications at the surgical wound site occur at higher rates than any other kind of adverse event in hospitalized patients, responsible for more than 25% of surgical readmissions.
SSIs are common, can be dangerous and costly and are often the focus of wound complication reporting, accounting for up to 31% of all hospital-acquired infections. However, SSIs are still underreported, largely due to improper and inconsistent identification methods among health systems. These infections often relate to other post-surgical wound complications including wound breakdown, fluid accumulation, and localized bleeding.
Expanding surveillance beyond only SSIs by including other complications has the potential to support care teams so that wound complications are more consistently captured and reported, putting the focus on visibility into patient conditions and appropriate intervention and treatment.
Consistent reporting could fuel a data-informed, predictive future of surgical wound care
Digital solutions can help improve surveillance of surgical wound complications. Johnson & Johnson MedTech’s Polyphonic digital ecosystem will connect data across world-class surgical technologies, robotics, and surgical software while leveraging the global scale of Johnson & Johnson. Leveraging the Polyphonic ecosystem, the company will explore patient monitoring based on new, standard reporting guidelines as determined in SSO classification.
