Bacterial skin contamination and bacterial recolonization, after surgical preparation, in foot operations and prevalence of postoperative early wound infection: a prospective study

Efficacy of Preoperative and Intraoperative Skin and Nail Surgical Preparation of the Foot in Reducing Bacterial Load

“…The results of the present study confirm those of previous reports demonstrating the difficulty of eliminating skin flora from the forefoot, [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] although a potential limitation of some of the previous studies was the use of qualitative culture For a description of each method, see Table 1.…”

“…The results of the present study confirm those of previous reports demonstrating the difficulty of eliminating skin flora from the forefoot, 7–14 although a potential limitation of some of the previous studies was the use of qualitative culture data 13 . In some cases, investigators have reported positive cultures taken from the nail fold after skin preparation as high as 30% to 95% in patients who underwent forefoot surgery 8,12–14 . The present results show a reduction of positive cultures from 100% to 58.3% (method 1) and 62.5% (method 1) for the nail fold in the posttreatment phase.…”

“…The main objective of this study was to investigate and determine the level of contamination of the surgical wound after partial avulsion of the nail plate to be applied to other “cold” surgeries, such as Winograd or Frost, and to determine the efficacy of saline solution irrigation in reducing bacterial load. The results of the present study confirm those of previous reports demonstrating the difficulty of eliminating skin flora from the forefoot, 7–14 although a potential limitation of some of the previous studies was the use of qualitative culture data 13 . In some cases, investigators have reported positive cultures taken from the nail fold after skin preparation as high as 30% to 95% in patients who underwent forefoot surgery 8,12–14 .…”

“…Therefore, the most common colonizing bacterium also seems to be one of the most common clinical pathogens. These findings are similar to those from a study 11 performed in adult volunteers who underwent simulated preoperative skin and nail preparation Previous studies 7–14 examining surgical skin preparations in foot and ankle surgery have focused on the efficacy of skin and nail decontamination after applying antiseptics (Table 4). We sought to compare two skin and nail preoperative skin and foot preparations in a prospective randomized controlled study.…”

Efficacy of intraoperative surgical irrigation with polihexanide and nitrofurazone in reducing bacterial load after nail removal surgery

“…32,33 Previous reports have identified Staphylococcus epidermidis as the most common micro-organism isolate from the foot after preoperative skin preparation, followed by Staphylococcus aureus. 8,[24][25][26] Often dismissed as a contaminant or colonizer, Staphylococcus epidermidis is increasingly being recognized as a true pathogen. [34][35][36] CNS species, specifically Staphylococcus epidermidis, are the most commonly cultured pathogen in infected ingrown toenails.…”