Burn wound infection; significance of rule of nine in microbial surveillance

ABSTRACT

Burn injuries are common and major health problem throughout the world. The burn wound represents as a favorable area for opportunistic colonization of microorganisms with exogenous and endogenous origin. In burns patients infections arise from multiple sources. Burn wounds become initially colonized and infected with Gram positive bacteria, mainly Staphylococci, that are superseded during the second week by Gram Negative bacteria. it is a microbial surveillance retrospective study; that aimed to evaluate the significance of Rule of nine in diagnosis of aerobic bacterial burn wound infection and carried out in between June 2007 to September 2011 in the Department of Pharmaceutics, University of Karachi.Descriptive retrospective study. A total of 118 patient irrespective of age, sex, date and time of burn, date and time of hospital admission, interval between time of burn and hospital admission, degree and percentage [%] of burn and duration of hospital stay [when specimen collected] were registered for this study. All patients were divided into two groups [A and B]. Out of 58 patients of group A isolation rate per patient was 1.1 while in group B it becomes 3.0. According to TBSA the isolation rate in group B rises with rise in TBSA. Most prevalent organism in these patients was found S. aureus[23%] P.aeruginosa[21%]. Burn patients are incubator for variety of aerobic bacteria and rate of isolation of these organisms increase with rise in TBSA. The wounds of these patient must required continuous microbial surveillance that may reduce the rate of mortality