Abstract
A prospective study of postoperative wound infection was carried out over a 12-month period. Intra-operative swabs from the patients' anterior nares, the opened viscus and parietes were cultured using standard bacteriological techniques. Of the 1770 wounds studied, 167 (9·4%) became infected. Wound infection rates, according to clinical wound types, were clean 5·9%, clean-contaminated 10·7%, contaminated 24·3% and dirty 52·9%. The figures according to microbiological wound types were clean 4·7%, and potentially, lightly and heavily contaminated 15·3%, 22·1% and 30·2% respectively.
The commonest causative organisms were
Staphylococcus aureus 23·7%,
Escherichia coli 16·9%,
Staphylococcus epidermidis 13·5% and
Pseudomonas aeruginosa 13·0%. When isolated intra-operatively,
Enterobacter spp.,
Proteus spp.,
Klebsiella spp. and
P. aeruginosa appeared to have a high probability of causing postoperative wound infection, but the intra-operative isolation of
Bacteroides sp. was a poor predictor of subsequent wound infection.