Quantitative bacteriology in wound care

Quantitative bacteriology in the management of wound sepsis provides an objective way to monitor the success or failure of wound care. The clinical appearance of a wound requiring skin grafting may be misleading. Grafting wounds that appeared clinically ready was unsuccessful when analysis showed bacteriological counts of 10(5) or greater organisms per gram of tissue. A rapid and simple method for quantitative tissue culture is described. Three cases are described illustrating the value of the results of the method.