Infections in open heart surgery.

More than 250,000 open heart surgical procedures are performed annually in the United States. The majority of these procedures are coronary artery bypass grafts (CABG) and valve replacements. In this forum our authors discuss the kinds of infections that occur in patients following open heart surgery, as well as the documented risk factors and microbiology of these infections. We also asked each author to outline the criteria used to diagnose post open heart surgery infections, and to address associated consequences and complications. Finally, we were interested in each author's definition of the infection control practitioner's role in the prevention of this particular subset of nosocomial infections.