Prevalence, bacteriological profile and antibiogram of surgical site infections at tertiary care teaching hospital, south India: A cross sectional study

Background: Surgical site infection (SSI) is one of the common causes of nosocomial infections. Nosocomial infections are responsible for a prolonged hospital stay and also associated with increased morbidity, mortality, and increased economic burden on the patients and family as well as overburden the hospital staff. Globally overall SSI rate varies from 2.5% – 41.9% resulting in high morbidity and mortality. However, a simple step such as hand washing, knowledge of bacteriological profile of SSIs in a hospital, and antibiotic susceptibility pattern of those isolates would help clinicians in choosing the empirical antibiotic treatment and curtail the SSIs. Objectives: The present study was undertaken to determine the prevalence of SSI, to isolate the causative organisms, and to study their antibiotic susceptibility pattern in a hospital. Materials and methods: The present hospital-based, cross-sectional study was conducted at a tertiary care teaching hospital in northern Telangana, India, from August 2017 to June 2018. All pus specimens from patients of clinically suspected SSIs that were received in the microbiology laboratory were processed as per standard microbiological techniques. The data recorded and maintained in the microbiology laboratory register was reviewed and analyzed for the study. Data was analyzed by calculating the percentages and applying the Chi-square test. The p-value