Objective:

to determine the number of patients that developed a surgical site infection (SSI), possible etiologic agents and complications.

Methods:

an observational and retrospective study that includes every patient that underwent and survived a surgical procedure at the general surgery I, II and III services at the University Hospital of Caracas between January and December 2019. The study data were collected through the review of the medical records. 48 medical records that met the inclusion criteria and different variables were analyzed, including: days of hospitalization, symptoms, laboratory results, microbiological cultures and treatments. From those variables, frequency tables and bivariate analysis (Pearson’s Chi-Square) were created with the IBM SPSS Statistics 26 program.

Results:

the SSI prevalence was 4,69% CI 95%= (2,79-7,16%) including the three surgery services (I, II and III) at the University Hospital of Caracas during 2019. Most of these occurred after emergency surgeries (87,50%) among which stand out: appendectomy (45,83%) and cholecystectomies (10,41%). Microbiological cultures were performed only in 22,91% of these patients and the following bacteria were isolated:E. coli (10,50%), Enterococcus sp. plus Klebsiella pneumoniae (6,24%), Morganella morganii (2,1%) and Streptococcus pneumoniae (2,1%).

Conclusion:

Surgical Site Infection (SSI) continues to be one of the main causes of morbimortality and increased hospital stay in surgical services in the hospital. These infections have a diverse bacterial etiology and are mostly associated with abdominal or emergency surgeries.