Factors predicting surgical site infection after clean contaminated surgery

Background: The infection of a wound is defined as the invasion of organisms through tissues following a breakdown of local and systemic host defences, leading to cellulitis, lymphangitis, abscess and bacteraemia. Southampton criteria and the centers for disease control and prevention criteria for the diagnosis of surgical site infections are used now for severity assessment. There is still controversy existing on the multifactorial causal relationship.Methods: Longitudinal Observational study with nonrandom purposive sampling carried out in the patients in OT, Casuality, ICU and Wards, in our hospital having clean contaminated abdominal operations for one-year period starting from November 2015 determine the factors responsible for surgical site infections following clean contaminated abdominal operations with prophylactic antibiotics(n=150).Results: Diabetes mellitus (odds ratio of 1.9) and emergency procedure (12.6%) were the most important risk factors for development of SSI. E. Coli (45%, n= 9) was the most common organism. Midline incision (n=6/22 = 27.27%) showed highest rate. Other high-risk factors are obesity, malnutrition, anemia, old age and prolonged duration of surgeries.Conclusions: Various host factors like malnutrition, obesity, patients knowledge about hygiene, presence of co-morbidity etc. coupled with environmental factors such as condition of the wounds, delay to initiate operation, duration of operation, prolonged exposure of peritoneal cavity to environment, prophylactic use of antibiotics and factors associated with surgery like type of incision, type of operation and experience of operating surgeon greatly contribute to occurrences of SSI. So, quality of surgical care including immediate assessment of patients, resuscitative measures, adequate preparation of patients and aseptic environment are important for control of SSI. Moreover, in absence of highly advanced surgical amenities, preoperative resuscitative units, modern operation theatre facilities and sophisticated sterilization procedure it is necessary to use prophylactic antibiotics to encounter the various types of micro-organisms responsible for surgical site infection, particularly E. coli.