Surgical Site Infections

Background: SSIs are hospital- acquired infections if the infection occurs within 30 days of an operating procedure, or one year if a device or foreign material is placed.

Methods: The present study was carried out by the Department of Microbiology, Mediciti Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad, India. HICC data, Microbiology registers, OT data records for operational notes, MRD for history of case presentation before and after surgery, and re-admission data of all patients who underwent surgeries in this hospital, or who visited the OPD'S for follow-up with or without complaint, were all reviewed. Increased pain and redness around the wound, delayed healing, pus, a foul odour, or discharge from the wound or a tissue sample are all common concerns. The total number of surgeries conducted between January 2017 & Dec 2017 was n=2716 out of them n=1958 were major, & n=758 were Minor surgeries.

Results: For the year 2017, we had a total of 8 SSI cases at our centre. Total clean procedures were 505 (46.16 percent), with a percentage of SSI of 1.188 percent in clean surgeries and 589 (53.33 percent) with a percentage of SSI of 0.33 percent in clean-contaminated surgeries. Six are deep-seated SSI and two are superficial incision SSI. Deep-seated SSIs were reported in 8 of the cases – 5 were related to orthopedic cases and one was due to gen surgery — hernioplasty. There were two clean contaminated cases, both of which were superficial SSIs and both of which were caesarian sections. Staphylococcus spp., a gram-positive organism, was the most common (87.5 percent). The pathogens most likely to cause SSIs in our center were Coagulase-negative Staphylococcus spp., which were prevalent in the hospital environment, particularly OT.

Conclusion: In this study, the overall incidence of SSIs was 1.188 percent in clean surgeries and 0.33 percent in clean contaminated surgeries. One of the study's limitations was that we only looked at clean and clean-contaminated surgeries. As a result, results must be interpreted considering this constraint.