Dear user of the Zero Surgical Site Infection Project (ZSSIP) website:
We cordially welcome you to this website, whether you are a healthcare professional or simply an interested citizen. We want to offer you, through its contents, the best and most up-to-date information on this enormous collective effort that is the ZSSIP, in which thousands of health professionals from all over Spain work to prevent surgical infections, as specialists in Preventive Medicine, surgeons of all specialties, anesthesiologists, managers and surgical and operating room nurses.
Surgery is a fundamental part of human health, and is necessary to cure or improve a large number of pathologies. However, it must be performed under the best safety conditions and preventing the fearsome surgical site infections (SSI). SSIs are very frequent adverse events (19 SSIs occur every hour in Spain and are suffered by 1 in 20 operated patients), potentially serious (causing thousands of deaths each year in Spain) and very costly for the patient and for the system of health (10-12,000 euros of extra direct costs per SSI).
They are also widely preventable events (between 30 and 60%) if all currently known preventive measures are rigorously applied. The very name of the project is our declaration of intent: we aspire to reduce the proportion of patients suffering from SSI to a baseline minimum (zero if possible), and we aspire to achieve this with effort and knowledge, putting into practice the bundles of preventive measures best supported by current scientific evidence.
In 2013, at the initiative of the Spanish Society of Preventive Medicine, Public Health and Health Management, a few hospitals decided to take action and implement the first ZSSIP protocols for the comprehensive prevention of SSIs. In 2016, the Ministry of Health began sponsoring the project and included it in the National Patient Safety Strategy. In 2017, the ZSSIP began its journey as a national project, being applied in practically all the autonomous communities and being endorsed by at least 12 scientific societies.
In these last 5 years (2017-2021) more than 130 hospitals have been formally interested in the project, of which 65 hospitals have participated between 2017 and 2021 providing data. More than 33,000 patients have been followed up between 2017-2021, in whom the preventive recommendations have been applied. We estimate that the application of the protocol in all Spanish hospitals would have an enormous potential benefit, capable of preventing 42,000 SSIs annually and saving 407 million euros in additional costs due to infections, prolonged stays, reinterventions, and readmissions.
In the various sections of the website you will find information about the work centers that participate in ZSSIP, the specific work protocols, the training materials you are looking for, the scientific articles commented on by experts, the links of interest, the news and events that are relate to ZSSIP, among others. If you also want your hospital to participate in the project, you will also have a private area to enter hospital data, obtain reports and answer any questions. If you have any other questions or queries, please contact us through the general information email Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.
Juan Francisco Navarro Gracia. Director of the Zero Surgical Site Infection Project
