Waqas Latif, Arslan Saleem, Sahar Saleem, Shamaila Afshan, Danish Mohsin, Ahmad Shahbaz.
Frequency of postoperative wound infections in open heart surgery.
J Cardiovascular Dis Jan ;11(3):70-3.

OBJECTIVE: Post operative complications are a good measure of quality of cardiac surgical care, as long as patient’s risk factors are taken into consideration. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of post operative wound infection in open heart surgery patients and to identify the various risk factors for wound infection. MATERIALS AND METHODS: it was cross-sectional analytic study. The study was conducted at Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC), Lahore from 10th July, 2009 to 10th November, 2009. A total of 282 patients were selected. The data were collected using medical records at the time of discharge from the hospital. RESULTS: In this study the mean age of patients was 54.11 ± 0.62 [95% C.I 52.89 - 55.32]. Out of 282 patients, 238(84.4%) patients were males. 201(71.3%) patients underwent Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG), 47(16.7%) patients underwent Valvular surgery and 34(12.1%) patients underwent both CABG and Valvular surgery. Overall 39(13.8%) patients had post-operative infection; 19(6.7%) patients had deep sternal wound infection, 17(6.0%) patients had superficial and 3(1.1%) have mediastinitis. 10(25.6%) patients got infection in ICU and 29(74.4%) patients got infection when in ward/room. Postoperative wound infection were significantly associated with increased in patient’s stay in wards/rooms (p-value 0.002), erythrocytes sedimentation rate (p-value 0.009), and white blood cells (p-value 0.003). Post operative wound infection were not significantly associated with gender, hypertension, diabetes, smoking, hyperlipidemia, abnormal hemoglobin, liver function, renal function and body mass index of the patients. There were no differences in average number of grafts, number of days in ICU and time of ventilation between post operative wound infection and without infection. CONCLUSION:In this study the wound infection rate is higher, so the special care should be provided to patients and further studies should be conducted to identify the various predisposing factors for development of the post operative wound infection. It will help in reducing the cost for antibiotics given for post-operative wound infection and an economic burden to the health care system. It will also reduced mortality and morbidity of patients.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com