The first year of national surveillance has shown that it is feasible to collect comparable data on SSI, which are already used for education, policy, and decision making in the network of participating hospitals. This gives room to effectuate the next aim, namely to use the network as an infrastructure for intervention research. Multivariate analysis shows that feedback on a procedure-specific level is important.

Age, additional nosocomial infections, wound-contamination class, preoperative stay, and the number of operations were identified as important risk factors for SSI in Dutch orthopedic patients.