Abstract

RODRIGUEZ FERNANDEZ, Zenén; PASCUAL BESTARD, Manuel; RICARDO RAMIREZ, José Manuel  and  DESPAIGNE ALBA, Izvieta. Characterization of the postoperative infections. Rev Cubana Cir [online]. 2011, vol.50, n.3, pp.266-275. ISSN 0034-7493.

Introduction: bacterial contamination is the essential requirement for appearance of postoperative infections and despite the advances of surgical, anesthetic techniques and of the biotechnology, still remains involving to the patient operated on, increasing its morbidity and mortality and unfavourable socioeconomic repercussions. Methods: a cross-sectional, descriptive and observational study was conducted in 103 patients admitted and operated on of major surgeries with postoperative infections in the general surgery service of the "Saturnino Lora" Teaching Provincial Hospital of Santiago de Cuba province over 2008, according to the selected variables. Objectives: to describe the major features of postsurgical infections related to its location, germs isolated, antibiotic-therapy used and hospital stay, as well as to determine the mortality due to this cause. Results: the more frequent locations of postoperative infections were: superficial incision, respiratory and of organ/space for the dirty and contaminated interventions. The mean of the hospital stay of the series increased to 15.2 days. Most of the germs isolated were gram-negative, sensitive to first line antibiotics used. Six patients deceased (5.8 %): 5 due to sepsis and one due to pulmonary thromboembolism . Conclusions: the level of bacterial contamination of the intervention is the more significant for the appearance of the postoperative infection, independent of its location. The politics for the antimicrobials use must to be correlated with the sensitivity of germs isolated in the bacteriological map of each assistance unit. The preventive measures must to begin in the preoperative period, over the intervention and to continue in the postoperative one due to the socioeconomic unfavourable repercussions of this fearsome postsurgical complication.

Keywords : postoperative infection; location; contamination level; hospital stay; antibiotic-therapy; microbiology; mortality.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )