Surgical site infection in a tertiary care hospital

Abstract

Background: Surgical Site Infections (SSI) is the third most commonly conveyed nosocomial infection which has an adverse impact on the hospital as well as on the patient. A continuous surveillance is called for, to keep a check on the incidence of SSI. Objectives: a) to study the incidence of SSI in our hospital; b) To study the risk factors of SSI in our hospital; c) To identify the areas in our hospital, which need to be strengthened and deal with proactive measures to curb the incidence of SSI. Methodology: It was a Prospective study conducted for 6 months in our hospital. 131 cases of Surgery were included in the study. All patients who are operated in general surgery department of VMKVMCH between July 2021 – December 2021. A few host factors, wound factors and surgery related factors that cause SSI were studied. Swabs were collected from the infected surgical wounds and processed by the conventional microbiological methods. Antimicrobial susceptibility was done by Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method. Results: Prolonged surgery (>2hours) and insertion of drain were found to be significantly associated with occurrence of SSI and the clean surgeries showed minimum risk of infection.