Abstract

Background: Postoperative wound infections are global problem in the field of surgery associated with long hospital stay, higher treatment expenditure, morbidity and mortality. The spectrum of infecting agents varies in each institution and same institution at different time points. Surveillance of surgical site infection with feedback of appropriate data to surgeons would be desirable to reduce surgical site infection rate. Hence we conducted this research to determine the prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of aerobic bacteria in post surgical wound infected patients in ACS Medical College & Hospital, Chennai. Materials and Methods: Pus samples collected from the patients were processed using standard bacteriological methods to be used for bacterial isolation and Antimicrobial Susceptibility pattern. Results: Among the 102 pus samples, 61 (59.80%) had bacterial growth and in that 51(83.61%) were monomicrobial and 10(16.39%) were polymicrobial with a total of 73 bacterial isolates. Among the 73 bacterial isolates 33 (45.20%) were Gram positive cocci and 40 (54.80%) were Gram negative bacilli. The most common bacteria isolated was Staphylococcus aureus 19 (26.03%), followed by Escherichia coli 18 (24.65%) and Coagulase Negative Staphylococcus 11 (15.07%). Antibiotic susceptibility test of the isolates showed that Vancomycin (100%) and Linezolid (100%) followed by Amikacin (93.94%) were the most effective antibiotics for Gram positive bacteria and for Gram negative isolates Amikacin (85%), Cefaperazone-sulbactam (80%) and Gentamycin (77.5%) were found to be the most effective. Conclusion: Surveillance of the postoperative wound infection should be done in each and every hospital at regular intervals to evolve the control strategies and reduce the infection rate.