• Sundaramurthi Sudharsanan, Sreenath Gs, Sathasivam Sureshkumar, Chellappa Vijayakumar, Sistla Sujatha, and Vikram Kate.
• Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research (JIPMER), Pondicherry, Puducherry, India.
• Wounds. 2017 Sep 1; 29 (9): 255-261.

ObjectiveThe objective of this study is to determine the role of ne needle aspiration microbiology (FNAM) in detecting the causative organisms of postoperative surgical site infections (SSIs) in comparison with the standard technique of surface swabbing. Ma- terials and Methods. In this study, 150 patients with SSIs following elective and emergency operations were included. In all patients, FNAM was performed along with conventional surface swabbing to identify the causative microorganism. Sensitivity of surface swab and FNAM was calculated as the number of samples collected from the diagnosed case of SSI.ResultsA total of 115 positive cultures were obtained from the 150 patients with SSIs; surface swab was positive in 110 cases and FNAM was positive in 94 cases. The mean number of organisms isolated by surface swab, and FNAM was 0.95 and 0.8, respectively. The sensitivity of surface swab was 94.3% in elective cases and 96.25% in emergency cases. The sensitivity of FNAM was 82.8% in elective cases and 82.5% in emergency cases. The sensitivity and negative predictive value of FNAM and surface swab did not signi cantly differ in clean elective cases.ConclusionThe overall sensitivity of surface swab and FNAM was 95.65% and 81.7%, respectively. Comparing the antibiotic suscep- tibility pattern, no difference was observed when the same organ- ism was isolated by both methods, indicating that FNAM does not offer bene t over the conventional wound surface swab in detecting microorganisms in SSI in both elective and emergency surgeries. In certain cases with unexplained wound infections, FNAM can be used as an investigation to identify speci c pathogens not detected by conventional surface swab.

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