Approximately 25.2 million inpatient surgical procedures were performed in the United States in 2002.1 In the same year, almost 135,000 patients were discharged with a principal diagnosis of postoperative surgical site infection (SSI). The mean length of hospitalization for these patients was 7.5 days, and the mean hospital charges were $24,346, resulting in aggregate charges of almost $3.3 billion.2 Patients who develop SSI have longer and costlier hospitalizations than patients who do not develop such infections,3 are 60% more likely to spend time in an intensive care unit and twice as likely to die, and more than 5 times more likely to be readmitted to the hospital.4