Knowledge and Awareness about Wound Infection after Surgery among Population in Saudi Arabia

Background: Surgical site infections (SSI) continue to be one of the most common post-operative consequences following surgery, it is an infection that develops in the incision made during a surgical operation is a significant cause of hospital morbidity, increasing ICU admission rates, hospital readmission, lengthening total hospital stay and tripling death rates. To assess knowledge and awareness about wound infection after surgery among population in Saudi Arabia.

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conduct in Saudi Arabia during July to December 2021, we distributed our questionnaire in Kingdome of Saudi Arabia, the participants involving general population adult living in Saudi (>15). The sample size was 3357 participants. The sample size was estimated using the Qualtrics calculator with a confidence level of 95%. Our inclusion criteria were Age,15 years old and older, residency in Saudi Arabia, Male and female, Saudi and non-Saudi, agree to participate. Analyzes was done by using the “Microsoft Office Excel Software” (2019) for Windows was used to enter data on the computer. The data was then statistically evaluated using the SPSS program, version 23.

Results: 63.8% of the participants were females. More than half of the respondents were younger than 25 years old. Most of the respondents (9.1%) had a university degree or higher education. Regards area of residence, 10.1% lived in Riyadh, 14.0% in Medina. The prevalence of SSI was 8.0%. There are 50.2% of respondents have reported that times being admitted to hospital were 5 or less, 53.9% have denied history of undergoing other previous surgeries. Also, 95.5% of respondents denied having a hospital acquired infection besides surgical site infection.

Conclusion: SSI is one of the commonest healthcare related infections which have a great impact on patient morbidity and mortality. The causes of SSIs are multi-factorial. The antimicrobial regimen isn’t much more effective than the persuasive strategy in controlling antimicrobial use in the long-term. Moreover, in many settings, there may be inadequate personnel for a restrictive approach and restriction strategies are unable to consider the appropriateness of use of non-restricted antibiotics, which forms the vast majority of antibiotics used in hospital.