A study of sepsis in surgical wounds

Published records of the frequency of wound sepsis are often unreliable sources of information on the general frequency of this complication because of unstandardized methods of reporting and because of the various views of different investigators as to what constitutes sepsis. A method of infection reporting, its study and analysis are outlined. A survey of postoperative infections by this method for the years 1959, 1960 and 1961 revealed infection rates of 2.02%, 1.20% and 1.14%, respectively. For the same period the percentages of wound infections caused by Staph. aureus were 83.06%, 69.8% and 51.8%, respectively. The most prevalent phage types were 55/53/54 and 52/80/81/82, although types 80/81/82 and 80 were also involved. Infections with Gram-negative organisms were encountered more often in 1961 than in 1959. The majority of these were of mixed type, and followed abdominal surgery.There is need for more comprehensive study and analysis of postoperative wound sepsis and its complications. It was apparent from this study that, statistically, a relatively low rate of postoperative infections may mask a high rate following a specific surgical procedure.