Abstract

Three hundred (300) post-operative wound swab specimens were aseptically collected from four hospitals and investigated. The four hospitals were Federal Medical Centre, Makurdi (FMCM), General Hospital, Gboko (GHG), General Hospital, Otukpo (GHO) and General Hospital North Bank, Makurdi (GHNBM). The swabs were cultured and organisms identified according to standard procedures. A prevalence rate of bacterial isolates (56.7%) was obtained from the post-operative wound sites investigated. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was the most encountered pathogen with 20.3% prevalence rate followed by Staphylococcus aureus (13.0%), while 8.3% accounted for co-infection of both organisms. Other organisms encountered included Klebsiella spp. (4.0%), Escherichia coli (3.3%), atypical coliform (2.7%), and Proteus spp. (2.3%). Enterococcus faecalis and Streptococcus pyogenes had the least prevalent rate of 1.3% each. Statistically, Chi square analysis showed that there was no significant difference in the number of isolates from FMCM, GHQ, GHO and GHNBM and in the occurrence of both organisms in relation to sex (p˃0.05). The incidence of P. aeruginosa was highest (38.4%) at Federal Medical Centre, Makurdi, compared with other collection points investigated while that of Staphylococcus aureus was highest (37.5%) at FMCM compared with all other collection points’ investigated. Antibiogram studies revealed that P. aeruginosa was most susceptible to levoxin to the magnitude of 98.4%. While P. aeruginosa was resistant to ampicillin, tetracycline and streptomycin, S. aureus was only resistant to tetracycline. The findings have revealed that nosocomial wound infections remain a menace in medical management of wounds.

Key words: Nosocomial, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, antibiotics, post-operative wounds, prevalence.