Scoring system to guide decision making for the use of gentamicin-impregnated collagen sponge to prevent deep sternal wound infection.

OBJECTIVES

The effectiveness of the routine retrosternal placement of a gentamicin-impregnated collagen sponge (GICS) implant before sternotomy closure is currently a matter of some controversy. We aimed to develop a scoring system to guide decision making for the use of GICS to prevent deep sternal wound infection.

METHODS

Fast backward elimination on predictors, including GICS, was performed using the Lawless and Singhal method. The scoring system was reported as a partial nomogram that can be used to manually obtain predicted individual risk of deep sternal wound infection from the regression model. Bootstrapping validation of the regression models was performed.

RESULTS

The final populations consisted of 8750 adult patients undergoing cardiac surgery through full sternotomy during the study period. A total of 329 patients (3.8%) received GICS implant. The overall incidence of deep sternal wound infection was lower among patients who received GICS implant (0.6%) than patients who did not (2.01%) (P=.02). A nomogram to predict the individual risk for deep sternal wound infection was developed that included the use of GICS. Bootstrapping validation confirmed a good discriminative power of the models.

CONCLUSIONS

The scoring system provides an impartial assessment of the decision-making process for clinicians to establish if GICS implant is effective in reducing the risk for deep sternal wound infection in individual patients undergoing cardiac surgery through full sternotomy.