Postoperative Surgical Site Infections in the Department of General Surgery of a Tertiary Care Centre: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study.

Introduction: Surgical site infection is defined by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention as a wound infection that occurs within 30 days of an operative procedure or within a year if an implant is left in place and the infection is thought to be secondary to surgery. It occupies 20% to 39% of all the infections acquired in hospitals. The aim of this study is to find out the prevalence of postoperative surgical site infections in the Department of General Surgery of a tertiary care centre. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study on a total of 384 post-operative patients of abdominal surgery was conducted in the Department of General Surgery of a tertiary care centre from August 1, 2020 to July 30, 2021 with ethical approval from the Institutional Review Committee (Reference number: 267). Convenience sampling was done. Post-operative patients fulfilling the inclusion and exclusion criteria were included in the study. Data were entered in Microsoft Excel and analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 21.0. Point estimate was done at a 95% Confidence Interval along with frequency and percentages for binary data and mean with standard deviation for continuous data. Results: Among 384 patients, the prevalence of surgical site infection was found to be 65 (16.92%) (13.15-20.65 at a 95% Confidence Interval). The patients had a mean age of 42.06±21.92 years. Conclusions: The prevalence of surgical site infection was higher in our study in comparison to other similar studies conducted in similar settings. Keywords: cross-sectional studies; prevalence; surgical wound infection.