Assessing postoperative wound sepsis rates is important from both an economic and an audit point of view. Most definitions of wound sepsis are too narrow and too subjective and wound scoring systems that have been developed to counteract these deficiencies suffer from a lack of objectivity, making valid comparisons between wound sepsis rates in different institutions impossible. The ASEPSIS scoring system is a definite advance in this area and its proven reproducibility makes it invaluable in multicentre trials assessing wound sepsis. However, it has limitations, mainly associated with the underlying assumption regarding the linearity of the ASEPSIS index. It is felt that by closely examining ASEPSIS wound scores from a large number of patients it may be possible to improve this scoring system.