Assessment of Frequency and Risk Factors for Surgical Wound Infections in Patients Undergoing Surgeries due to Acute Abdomen in Sina Teaching Hospital in Tabriz; a Cohort Study

Background: Surgical wound infection is known as one of the most prevalent complications of the surgeries. Appropriate surgical wound and incision management in pre-, during, and post-operative time period is critical to prevent complications. In this regard, identifying the most important risk factors for wound infection seems necessary. Therefore, the aim of this study to evaluate the incidence of surgical site infection (SSI) and its related factors in patients undergoing surgery due to acute abdomen.Methods & Materials: This study was performed as a prospective cohort study in patients who were admitted with acute abdomen in Sina hospital of Tabriz during the period of January 2017 – July 2018. Patients were included if they were indicated for abdominal surgery. Signed informed consent was waived and two data checklists of possibly related factors in two stages including pre-operation and during-operation were filled out for all patients. Then all patients were followed for one month for the incidence of wound infection. Mean and standard deviation (SD) of quantitative variables and frequency and percentage of qualitative variables were calculated. Chi-square test was used for inferential analysis. Relative risk (RR) was also reported. SPSS version 24 was used for all analyses. A p-value of less than 0.05 was considered significant.Results: Among 321 included patients, 64.5% were male and 35.5% were female. Nine patients (2.8%) had an age older than 70 and the other patients were younger than 70. Eighteen patients (6%) were diabetic and 69 patients (22.1%) were smoker. The incidence of SSI was 5.6%. Among the pre-operation factors, some of them were significantly related to the incidence of SSIs such as age (RR= 3.1, p=0.046), diabetes (RR= 4.01, p=0.046), smoking (RR= 2.6, p=0.026). Also, among during-operation factors type of the surgery (RR= 3.41, p=0.041), size of incision (RR=2.7, p=0.01) and days of staying in ICU (RR=1.6, p=0.023) were significantly related to SSI.Conclusion :Older, diabetic, and smoker patients need to be more closely observed for prevention of surgical wound infection due to their higher risk of SSI. Laparoscopic surgeries are preferred to open surgeries due to less SSI risk. The minimum size of the surgical site incision should be made to prevent SSI.

کلیدواژه ها:

Acute abdomen surgery ، complications of surgery ، surgical wound infection