Introduction:

Infectious complications in surgical patients are a significant clinical problem. Even with advances in treatments, especially in intensive care units, sepsis is the leading cause of death in these services.

Objective:

Examine the incidence and causes of sepsis in a surgical intensive care unit.

Methods:

Qualitative and retrospective study carried out in the Intensive Care Unit of the National Center of Minimal Access Surgery from January 2017 to December 2019. The sample consisted of 62 patients with infectious complications after surgery. The analyzed variables were age, sex, type of sepsis, state at the discharge time, stay and isolated germs. The absolute, relative frequency and T test for a sample were calculated. SPSS IBM program for Windows was used.

Results:

The incidence rate per year of postoperative patients with sepsis was of 7.1% in 2017 to 13.8% in 2019. There was predominance of women in ages from 70 to 79 years old with eight patients (25.00%), with a total of 13 deaths (21.00%), seven of them (11.30%) due to intraabdominal sepsis. There was an average hospital stay of 15.24 days. Pseudomona was the most isolated germ.

Conclusions:

There is an increase in the incidence rate; older female adults were the most representative group, intraabdominal and respiratory infections were determined as the main causes of sepsis and Gram-negative bacteria are the ones with more presence in microbiological cultures.

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