A two-year study released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on January 21, 2008 and published in the Archives of Surgery placed the infection rate following mastectomy at 2 percent.

Previous studies placed the risk between 1 and 28 percent. Current data, however, suggests that one in 20 mastectomy patients will develop incision site infection, making the complication more common than once believed.

Of the 950 patients involved in the study, 5.3 developed infections within 12 months of the initial procedure with the average time for the onset of infection being 47 days following the surgery.

Of those mastectomy patients studied, one in eight developed an infection from an implant used for reconstruction with a 7 percent infection rate with reconstruction using abdominal tissue.

The study estimated that post-surgical medical care per patient costs approximately $4,000 and emphasized the need for the more widespread use of preventive antibiotics as well as meticulous attention to wound care and caregiver hygiene.

The rise of staph infections that are drug-resistant has placed renewed attention on infection prevention in the hospital setting and at large.

Margaret Olsen, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, wrote in the report, "The surgical site infection rates following breast surgery seem to be much greater than the nationally reported incidence of 2 percent and much higher than what is expected for clean surgical procedures."