Surgical Infection is an infection that occurs after surgery in the part of the body where the surgery took place. Surgical Infection is a major surgical problem in surgical practice. Most patients who have surgery do not develop an infection. However, infections develop in about 1 to 3 out of every 100 patients who have surgery.
There is higher risk factor involved in surgical infection if the patient has malnutrition, obesity mellitus, uremia, jaundice, cancer, immunosuppression, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, ischemia, HIV, or hematoma.
Surgical infection may be superficial infection in wound or deep surgical site infection in the depper fascio, muscular layers or organ space infections like abdomen cavity. Epithelial surface act as mechanical barriers and phagocytes, antibodies, complements, macrophages, leukocytes and opsonins act as protective mechanism.
Talking about the surgical infection control, virulence of organisms, blood supply, body immunity and support of antibiotics are the decisive factors in proper response to control surgical infections. A resource for drug identification which is a new paradigm in pill identification pill identification sites for both professionals and the public.
How to prevent Surgical Infections?
For preventing Surgical Infections, healthcare providers and healthcare staff should adopt the following guidelines,
- Clean their hands and arms up to their elbows with an antiseptic agent just before the surgery.
- Clean their hands with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand rub before and after caring for each patient.
- May remove some of your hair immediately before your surgery using electric clippers if the hair is in the same area where the procedure will occur. They should not shave you with a razor.
- Wear special hair covers, masks, gowns, and gloves during surgery to keep the surgery area clean.
- Give antibiotics before your surgery starts. In most cases, you should get antibiotics within 60 minutes before the surgery starts and the antibiotics should be stopped within 24 hours after surgery.
- Clean the skin at the site of your surgery with a special soap that kills germs.
Here it is important to add the healing scoring system. Southampton Grading System is for Healing and Infection,
- Grade 0 : Is normal healing.
- Grade 1 : Is with bruising/ mild erythema
- Grade 2 : Is severe erythema with other features of inflammation at or around wound.
- Grade 3 : Is presence of pus or deep infection or tissue break or significant hematoma