[Postoperative wound infection in trauma surgery]

Our knowledge of the morphology and biochemistry of wound infection is still incomplete. Above all, the time and causal connections of the individual inflammatory phenomena are by no means satisfactorily clear. It is, however, an undeniable fact that the course of a wound infection depends most significantly on the time it was discovered. Transition between a beginning, impending, gradually creeping or overtly manifest wound infection is flowing and cannot be safely differentiated on the basis of the possibilities we have at our disposal today even in a hospital with fully update equipment. In our search for objectifiable early criteria of a wound infection we found that to date the determination of the lysozyme content in the wound secretion is a reliable and facile method. In fact, the composition and condition of the suctioned-off or drained-off wound secretion would deserve much closer attention in future postoperative wound control. If there is only the slightest suspicion of disturbance of physiological wound healing we should not show the slightest hesitation to make full use of the entire spectrum of therapeutic possibilities at our disposal to reduce the occurrence of septic wound complications to the barest minimum.