An investigation on surgical-site infection among post cesarean section patients with Burkholderia cepacia contaminated ultrasonic couplant.

Man Wang; Lijie Zhang; Shenglin Xia; Haidong WU; Ruihong Zhang; Mugeng Fan; Tao Wang

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An investigation on surgical-site infection among post cesarean section patients with Burkholderia cepacia contaminated ultrasonic couplant.

Author: Man WANG ^{1
,

2} ; Lijie ZHANG ³ ; Shenglin XIA ⁴ ; Haidong WU ⁴ ; Ruihong ZHANG ⁴ ; Mugeng FAN ⁴ ; Tao WANG ⁵
Author Information

1. Zhongshan Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Guangdong 528403, China
2. Chinese Field Epidemiology Training Programme, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
3. Chinese Field Epidemiology Training Programme, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
4. Zhongshan Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Guangdong 528403, China.
5. Zhongshan Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Guangdong 528403, China. Email: wangtao.cdc@gmail.com.
Publication Type:Journal Article
MeSH: Adolescent; Adult; Burkholderia cepacia; Case-Control Studies; Cesarean Section; Cross Infection; etiology; Equipment Contamination; Female; Humans; Pregnancy; Surgical Wound Infection; etiology; Young Adult
From:Chinese Journal of Epidemiology 2014;35(5):566-568
CountryChina
Language:Chinese
Abstract:
OBJECTIVEIn May 2013, an abnormal increase of surgical-site infection among post cesarean section patients was reported at one hospital in Zhongshan. An investigation was conducted to identify the risk factors and related control measures.
METHODSAll the reported surgical-site infection records among post cesarean section patients were checked. A review of cesarean section schedules of health workers was also performed. An 1 : 2 case-control study was conducted among surgical-site infection cases in May 2013. Microbiologic cultures were performed on 2 surgical site secretion samples and 12 samples from the environment. All the positive isolates were molecular typed by pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE).
RESULTSIn May 2013, 4 post cesarean section patients who developed surgical-site infection symptom at one hospital in Zhongshan were reported, with an attack rate as 10.3% (4/39). The emergence time of symptom was 2-3 days after operation. All of the 4 cases underwent an emergency operation. The median time interval for cases from admission to operation was 7.2 hours (ranged from 2 to 9 hours), lower than that seen in the controls, with a median time of 20.8 hours (Z = 5.50, P = 0.03). Two of the 4 cases took type-B ultrasonic inspection 1.4 h and 8.4 h before the operation, and the other two cases took continuous fetal heart monitoring 2 hours before the operation. Skin of the operation area on the 4 cases had been exposed to ultrasonic couplant, without a thorough clean. The proportion of type-B ultrasonic inspection or continuous fetal heart monitoring was much higher in cases than in controls (χ² = 5.19, P = 0.01). Burkholderia cepacia (BC) isolates were discovered from:one surgical site secretion, 2 type-B ultrasonic probe samples, one ultrasonic couplant in use and one ultrasonic couplant unopened. All the isolates were identified as 100% identical by PFGE.
CONCLUSIONThe skin of operation area of cesarean section patients had been exposed to BC contaminated ultrasonic couplant without thorough cleaning, which seemed to be related to the outbreak of surgical-site infection, in our case.