Abstract

PREVENTION OF SURGICAL SITE INFECTION FROM THE HIPPOCRATIC PERIOD TO MODERN TIMES. A REVIEW

Dr. Asgar Nazir (MD)*, Dr. Umer Hamid Wani and Dr. Uzair Yousf Mir (MD)

ABSTRACT

Surgical site infections affect approximately 0.5%to 3%of patients undergoing surgery and are associated with longer hospital stays than patients with no surgical site infections. Avoiding razors for hair removal, maintaining normothermia, use of chlorhexidine gluconate plus alcohol–based skin preparation agents, decolonization with intranasal antistaphylococcal agents and antistaphylococcal skin antiseptics for high-risk procedures, controlling for perioperative glucose concentrations, and using negative pressure wound therapy can reduce the rate of surgical site infections. We searched PubMed, Google Scholar, and the Cochrane database for English-language studies of pathogenesis, clinical presentation, and prevention of surgical site infections published from January 1, 2016, when guidelines were most recently published by the WHO, to September
15, 2022. In addition, we manually searched the references of selected articles for additional relevant publications. The books consulted were mainly The Method of Medicine (Kitāb al-Taṣrīf), The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun Fittib), The Complete Book of the Medical Art (Kamil Sana), Colleget (Kitabbul Kulliyat), Kitabul Umda Fil Jarahat, Tib Akbar. This study is constructed on a scrupulous overview of writings, compositions, and publications on Surgical site infections using internet sources like Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Google Scholar, Medline.

Keywords: Surgical site infections, Unani system of medicine, The Canon of Medicine.