Comparison of Postoperative Wound Infection Between Staple and Prolene Suture Closure Techniques in Elective Surgeries at a Tertiary Care Hospita

Objective: To compare the frequency of postoperative wound infection with staple wound closure and Prolene suture in clean elective surgery. Study Design: Quasi-experimental study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of General Surgery, Combined Military Hospital, Multan Pakistan, from Feb 2021 to Aug 2022. Methodology:A total of 156 patients were divided into two equal groups. Group-A (Staple wound closure) and Group-B (Prolene suture closure). All wounds in both groups were inspected on 3rd, 7th, 14th and 30th postoperative day for presence or absence of wound infection in both groups and compared by applying Chi square test at 0.05 level of significance. Results: Mean age of patients in Group-A was 53.24±7.08 years vs 54.57±5.74 years in Group-B. Majority of the patients in both groups were male. The most common operation performed was skin and soft tissue surgery. Prevalence of infection in this study was 7.69% (n=12). Wound infection in Group-A was 3.8% (n=3), whereas in Group-B it was 11.5% (n=9) (p=0.037). Conclusion: Our study results support the use of skin staples for skin closure in elective cases as compared with Prolene sutures, as it is less time-consuming and has a decreased incidence of postoperative infection.