Prevalence of Surgical Site Infection in Two Methods of Patients Preoperative Preparation

surgical site infections are the second most common nosocomial infections. As surgical site infection is the cause of significantly mortality and morbidity in patients, recognition of risk factors and routes of decreasing their incidence is of considerable value. In this study, 1383 orthopaedic operations, which were conducted from 1999 to 2000 in Shariati Hospital, were reviewed. These were two groups of patients: in the first group, the patients were shaved on the day before operation and in operating room, after application of betadine 7.5%; the patients were painted with betadine 10% before the operation. In the second group, shaving and painting (without scrub) was done in the operating room just before surgery. The prevalence of surgical site infection in these two groups was recorded. Statistical analysis with T-test and Chi-square methods revealed that although overall surgical site infection prevalence in two groups was the same, but the prevalence of deep infection in group two was significantly lower than group 1(P<0.01).this difference leads to a decrease in therapeutic cost of approximately 560,000,000 Rials each year in this country.