Abstract

Wounds and their management are fundamental to the practice of surgery. In any elective surgery or in the surgery of trauma, the surgeon’s task is to minimize the adverse effects of the wound, remove or repair damaged structures and enhance the process of wound healing to restore function. Because of unavoidable contamination of wounds that occurs at the time of surgery, surgeons have used a number of methods of wound management. Use of subcutaneous drains at the site of surgery is one of them. The study was carried out prospectively on patients of contaminated abdominal surgeries to assess the role of placement of negative suction drains in wounds subcutaneously on the incidence of incisional Surgical Site Infections (SSIs). This study was a prospective, open and comparative cohort study. Patients were divided into two groups by random sampling. Total sample size was 300 patients with 150 in each group. Subcutaneous suction drains were inserted in one group (cases) and no drains were inserted in another group (control). The results from the present study show that use of negative suction drain in subcutaneous = plane during laparotomy for class III wounds reduces the incidence of postoperative surgical site of infection, seroma formation and wound dehiscence. It was concluded that insertion of subcutaneous suction drains at the end of operation could provide effective drainage of the wound collections and wound seroma, thereby preventing SSI and wound dehiscence.

Keywords: Subcutaneous drain; Seroma; Surgical site infection; Diabetes; Sepsis