Publication:

A prospective study of surgical site infections and related risk factors in a teaching hospital

Background Surgical site infections are the most common nosocomial infection causes morbidity and mortality among inpatients of hospital. Surgical site infection (SSI) varies hospital to hospital. The present study was designed to find out the incidence and various risk factors associated with surgical site infection in the surgical wards of MNR hospital, Sangareddy, Telanagana, India.

Methods The study was carried out on 248 patients who underwent various surgeries in the General Surgery department of MNR hospital, Sangareddy, Telangana, India. A predesigned protocol was used to collect the data. Surgical site infections were examined and graded. All the samples were collected aseptically and were processed by the standard microbiological techniques. Data was analysed by SPSS.20 software.

Results Among 248 patients, 45 developed surgical site infection. Among 45 patients, 25 were grade 3 and 20 were grade 4 type of infection. Surgical site infections (SSIs) were most commonly found among males, aged, diabetics, anaemic, underweight and overweight, hypertensive, blood transfusion and patients with longer hospital stay. Surgical Site Infections were higher in emergency cases than elective surgeries. Staphylococcus aureus was the most common organism isolated from surgical site infections. Multidrug resistance organisms were predominant in surgical site infections.

Conclusions The incidence of surgical site infection is high. Age, sex, diabetic, blood transfusion, prolonged hospital stay are the important risk factors for SSIs. So implementing proper antibiotic policies and infection control measures can reduce SSIs to great extent.