Review on Surgical Site Infections

Abstract

Surgical site infections (SSI) are the wound infections which occur within a time period of 30days in superficial incisional SSI and can extend to 1year after surgery in case of prosthetic implantation (deep incisional SSI) or  can occur in traumatized organ/space like pleural space, peritoneal space, joint space etc. Surgical Site Infections can be classified into different categories depending upon the site and extent of infections. They are incisional SSI and organ SSI where incisional SSI is further subdivided into Superficial SSI and deep incisional
SSI. Staphylococcus aureus and Coagulase negative staphylococci is the primary cause of infection in SSI. Wound swabbing and serum examinations are the used diagnostic technique for SSI diagnosis. National Nosocomial Infections Surveillan (NNIS) is the common tool to predict risk of SSI and other ways of assessing risk are ASEPSIS and Southamptom scoring system. With increasing risk of SSIs, wound can be classified into four different classes. They are clean, contaminated, clean-contaminated and dirty wounds. The Recommended antibiotic for surgical site infection is first generation cephalosporin’s particularly Cefazolin.