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Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2004;25:142
© 2004 Elsevier Science NL

Letter to the Editor

Reply to VonOppell

^a Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, The Cardiothoracic Centre Liverpool, Thomas Drive, Liverpool L14 3PE, UK
^b Department of Research and Development, The Cardiothoracic Centre, Thomas Drive, Liverpool L14 3PE, UK

Received 25 September 2003; accepted 28 September 2003.

^* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-151-293-2397; fax: +44-151-220-8573
e-mail: brian.fabri@ctc.nhs.uk

Key Words: Sternal wound infection • Coronary artery bypass grafting • Risk factors

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

We appreciate the comments of Drs von Oppell and Rammohan on our article.

The definition in our paper relates specifically to deep sternal wound infections and we appreciate that perhaps this is not made abundantly clear in the methodology. Superficial wound infections were defined as those that do not penetrate the subcutaneous tissue layer. The wound may exhibit erythema and a small amount of drainage that contains bacteria. In . . . [Full Text of this Article]