“How common are infections with surgery?”

Surgical site infection rate is normally 1-10% depending on the type of surgery and if bowel was entered, or areas with high bacterial count in the body.

Statistically, surgery that does not involve infected or contaminated tissues have less than 1% chance of infection, but your specific risk depends on many factors such as your age, health (underlying medical conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, vascular disease), smoking or tobacco use history, certain medications you are taking such as steroids and medications that alter your immune system can possibly increase your risk. Best person to discuss your specific risk is your surgeon who knows your specific condition and planned surgery, and should discuss these risks with you before surgery.

This depends on what kind of surgery it is. Surgeries are clean, clean-contaminated, contaminated, or dirty. The risk of infection is lowest in clean surgery such as breast surgeries, and highest in dirty surgeries like trauma surgeries that come from the street with dirt and foreign bodies.

Surgical site infections - which include infections in/around the surgical incision site in the skin - are fairly uncommon with “planned” (i.e. elective) surgeries. The risk increases with several patient factors - including morbid obesity, diabetes, immune-modulating drug use (i.e. steroids), and smoking.

The risk of infection varies by type of surgery. A straightforward inguinal hernia repair has a <1% infection risk. A large abdominal hernia repair may have about a 10% infection risk. An appendectomy has about a 5% infection risk. A colon surgery may have at least a 30% infection risk.

If the small bowel or colon are to be manipulated, your chance of infection is much higher. If the procedure just involves the abdominal wall, your chance of infection is much lower. The more body fat you have, the higher the risk as well.