Abstract: Background: Post operative infections remains major problems for any surgeon. In orthopedic surgery, post operative wound infection carries high morbidity and mortality. Most of these infections are bacterial origin and thought to be due to wound contamination at the time of operation. Hence this study was conducted to assess the growth of organisms from suction tip and drain fluid.
Methods: This cross sectional study was done among the patients undergoing orthopedic surgery in the department of orthopedics at Sri Muthukumaran Medical College and Research Institute during January 2018 to January 2020. A total of eighty post operative cases were included in the study. Following the surgical procedure the suction tip culture and drain fluid cultures were sent for analysis. The reports of the same were also entered in the proforma. Data entry was done in Microsoft excel and statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 20.
Results: In this study, 6(7.5%) cases had wound infection. Among them 5(83.3%) and 1(16.7%) cases had superficial and deep wound infections. On assessing the suction tip culture, positive and negative reports were noted in 15% and 85% of cases, respectively. Drain fluid culture showed 8.7% and 91.3% cases with positive and negative reports, respectively.
Conclusion: A positive report will enable the surgeon to keep a close watch on the wound behaviour and intervene earlier, if necessary and a negative culture does not ruled out the infection.
