Abstract
BACKGROUND: Surgical wounds heal by primary intention in all the elective and emergency surgical procedures. Current practice is to place dressing over the closed wound before the patient leaves the sterile environment of the operating theatre. Dressing is a material applied to protect a wound and favour its healing. However, to leave wound open in direct contact to environment following any procedure by just applying some ointment on it, the so called open wound treatment is still controversial one. In the present study we have compared open wound treatment vs occlusive dressings in elective surgical cases with respect to surgical site infections. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present study was conducted on 100 patients admitted for elective general surgery after taking written informed consent. Patients were divided randomly in to two equal groups each comprising of 50 patients. In Group A, patients had occlusive dressing till removal of stitches and in Group B, patients wounds were kept exposed to environment after the surgical procedure. RESULTS: In present study we observed total 7% of postoperative wounds were infected of all the clean and clean contaminated wounds we studied. In Group A, patients had occlusive dressing and these patients had 8% infection rate whereas in Group B patients, wounds were kept exposed to environment and these patients had 6% infection rate. CONCLUSION: It is hereby concluded that in the elective surgical cases there is no harm in leaving the wounds open postoperatively. This method not only helps in arresting the infective pathology at a lesser stage but also saves surgeon's time and patient's money.