Abstract

ABSTRACT:
OBJECTIVES:
To show the correlation of postoperative wound infection with intraoperative culture results and duration of operation.
METHODS:
Prospective studies of 168 randomized patients in which a wound swab was taken at wound closure and send for culture results, another swab taken if the wound become infected 5-7 days postoperative and send for culture to show the correlation of postoperative wound infection with intraoperative culture results in al-NAJAF teaching hospital from Jan.2003 to Jan.2004. Wounds are classified in to clean, contaminated and dirty surgery.
RESULTS:
In clean surgery the contamination rate was 7.4% and infection rate was 3.7 %, while in contaminated surgery the contamination rate was 27.7% and infection rate was 11%, while in dirty surgery the contamination rate was 35.9% and the infection rate was 25.6%. The results were compared with other studies of the world. Pseudomonas aeruginosa and S. aureus are the most common microorganisms to produce wound infection which are a serious microbe and are mostly hospital acquired and resistant to most of the commonly available antibiotics. As regards to relation of postoperative wound infection and duration of operation our results shows that long operations has a higher infection rate (more than 1 hour was 65.4% from the total cases) while the infection rate in surgical operations less than 1 hour was 34.6%,so infection rate is doubled by operations lasting more than one hour.
CONCLUSION:
The study showed a higher infection rate in clean surgery due to weak sterilization and poor preoperative preparation of the patients and the role of postoperative antibiotics in reduction of wound infection by about 38%.