Clinical bacterial isolates from hospital environment as agents of surgical wound nosocomial infections

Abstract

The relationship between bacteria isolated from the hospital environment and those from wounds of operated patients was investigated to determine the causal agents of surgical site nosocomial infections. The study was carried out on bacterial species isolated from the theatre, surgical ward and patients’ surgical wounds in a tertiary health institution in Nigeria. Bacteria were isolated from the air, floor and patients’ surgical wounds in the theatre and surgical ward by using MacConkey agar, Chocolate agar Nutrient agar and Peptone water broth as isolating media. Plasmid sizes and bands of selected twenty (20) of the isolates were determined by electrophoresis analysis to determine their relatedness. The bacterial species isolated were: Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Streptococcus pyogenes, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus cereus, Bacillus megaterium, Proteus mirabilis, Proteus vulgaris, Citrobacter freundii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli and Serratia marscenses. The result of electrophoresis showed that some of the isolates from the hospital environment and surgical sites have the same number of bands and molecular weight. It was concluded that isolates from the hospital environment with the same numbers of bands and molecular sizes with those isolated from patients wounds in the same hospital environment are of the same strain, and must have come from the same source, and therefore are likely to be responsible for the surgical wound infections observed in the patients studied.

Keywords: Surgical wound infections, Environmental pathogens and nosocomial infections, Hospital pathogens.