DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2017.v05i12.024

Pages: 4907-4913

Post-operative wound infection (or) Surgical site infection (SSI) is a severe problem in the surgical specialties, which can cause mortality, morbidity, delays incision healing and economic burden. In most SSI the causative pathogens originate from endogenous flora of the patients skin, mucous membranes (or) hollow viscera and prolonged hospital stay. Aims and Objects of the study are isolation and identification of the bacterial pathogens from the SSI, their clinical profile and association of risk factors. A total number of 210 clinically suspected cases of post-operative wound infections in various surgical departments during July 2009 to April 2010 were included. Standard bacteriological methods were used for bacterial isolation. Among enrolled cases the age of the patients ranged from ≤20 yrs to ≥ 60 yrs. Out of 210 wound swabs 167/210 were culture positive aerobically yielding 235 bacterial isolates, while 43 were sterile. Of these 112 out of 131 were emergency surgery patients and 55 out of 79 were elective surgery. The infection rate was high (89.47%) in dirty-infected wounds. The maximum rate of isolation of pathogens was seen in surgeries lasting >2hours (89.39%) and after EmLSCS (15.71%). Klebsiella pneumonia and Pseudomonas aeruginosae was commonest polymicrobial growth pattern followed by Eschericia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae seen. Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosae was commonly isolated pathogens in monomicrobial and polymicrobial etiology. Of all risk factors pre-operative stay of >7 days (31.9%) was considered as the most significant factor. The present bacteriological study has determined the commonest bacteria and associated risk factors responsible for the post-operative wound infections. Active surveillance is recommended.