(dailyRx)
Being naked and unconscious on a table surrounded by total strangers isn’t the only thing that can make an operation a frightening experience.
There’s the danger of anesthesia, the fear of what put you in the operating room in the first place, and don’t forget the general stress of being cut open! Unfortunately, another big stress associated with surgery can be surgical site infections.
Surgical infections are not a new problem in medicine. Until the discovery of germ theory by Louis Pasteur, surgical wounds would routinely get infected and cause great sickness and death among those unfortunate enough to need surgery. But even now with sterile operating rooms, strict antiseptic precautions for surgeons and nurses, and incredibly advanced antibiotics, the problem of infection after surgery still affects modern medicine.
A surgical site infection occurs when any of the tissues that have been manipulated during surgery become infected with germs from our own bodies or from the operating room. Usually the pathogen is bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus (which lives on our skin and in our nose) or Escherichia coli and enterococcus species (which live in our colon). In addition, surgical site infections can come from outside of our bodies, such as contaminated surgical equipment or operating room staff, or even bacteria in the air if the ventilation system is not functioning properly. Surgical infection routinely prolongs for seven to ten days the length of a hospital stay, which increases the risk for another hospital acquired infections like pneumonia.
The worst-case scenario of any infection is sepsis, a condition in which bacteria grows in the bloodstream and inflames the organs. Sepsis is so serious an illness that 50 percent of patients who become septic will not survive.
But if the operating room and surgical environment is clean and sterile, how do patients still get infections? Surgical wounds can actually be classified into four categories: clean, clean-contaminated, contaminated and dirty/infected.