Abstract

Background: Wound infections are considered a major problem in the field of surgery for a long time, with growing bacterial resistance to drugs that were once considered the first line of treatment for post-operative wound infections, according to data spanning two years. The objectives of this research were to evaluate the prevalence of bacteriological profiles that cause surgical wound infections and the antimicrobial susceptibility patterns between outpatient clinics at Azadi teaching hospital in Duhok, Iraq. Methods: 165 wound swab samples were collected from surgical wound infections and tested on Blood agar, MacConkey agar, and Nutrient agar, then identified using different cultures and standard biochemical tests. On Muller Hinton Agar, all of the isolates were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility using the disk diffusion technique, as defined by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI). Results: 90 (54.5%) of the 165 surgical wound swab samples cultured had a positive bacterial culture, with Klebsiella pneumoniae 25 samples (27.8%) being the most common pathogen, followed by Staphylococcus aureus (20 samples). Some gram-negative bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa (14 samples), Escherichia coli (13 samples), Proteus mirabilis (7 samples), and Enterobacter cloacae were also isolated (2 samples). Except for amikacin, imipenem, and ciprofloxacin, the majority of pathogens isolated demonstrated greater resistance to most other antibiotics. Conclusion: In this research, the incidence of surgical wound infection was found to be higher in the study region. Klebsiella pneumoniae was isolated as the most common causative agent, with multi-drug resistance and antibiotype patterns that varied.

Keywords

The article was added to IASJ on 2021-06-16

94 Total full text downloads since the date of addition