should be on the
subject, the studies
that are available all
show that wound
irrigation does
indeed reduce the
risk of infection. I
dedicated a signifi-
cant amount of time
to testing and prov-
ing this theory —
and I did it by per-
forming colon resections. Why this procedure? Because it's consid-
ered a "dirty surgery" by physicians everywhere. You can't do the
surgery without some type of contamination. The current infection
rate for this procedure is around 10% — sometimes even higher. My
thinking was that if I could lower the SSI rate on this procedure, I
knew I'd be on to something.
After 154 colon resections in which I conducted all the necessary
follow-up to make the research viable, our SSI rate was just 0.5%.
Now that wasn't just due to irrigation. This was just the final part of a
very thorough process that included:
• timely and appropriate prophylactic antibiotic administration,
• clipping rather than shaving of hair,
• core temperature control,
• timeliness of the procedure,
• correct non-tension anastomosis,
• glucose control, and
• oxygenation.
O C T O B E R 2 0 1 8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 7 5
• WORTHWHILE All it takes is around 5 minutes at the end of surgery to do a proper
wound irrigation.
