Mediastinitis Following Open-Heart Surgery

Open chest management after cardiac operations: outcome and timing of delayed sternal closure

“…Arrhythmia as an indication for OC has been reported by Furnary et al [10]. The group of patients undergoing DSC are particularly at risk for infection because they have predisposing factors such as: prolonged CPB time, LCO, excessive bleeding, and the need for multiple re-explorations of the chest [19,22]. In our analysis, it is interesting to observe that the incidence of wound infections, mediastinitis, and sternal dehiscence after DSC was not significantly different from the controls with primary sternal closure.…”

Successful treatment of deep sternal infections following open heart surgery by bilateral pectoralis major flaps

“…Various risk factors for development of wound complications have been reported including diabetes [6], bilateral harvesting of the internal mammary artery [7], obesity [8], corticosteroid treatment [9] and prolonged procedural times [10]. Also prolonged postoperative mechanical ventilation and pulmonary infection increase the risk of a mediastinal infection [11].…”

Suppurative mediastinitis after open-heart surgery: a comparison between cases caused by Gram-negative rods and by Gram-positive cocci

“…Since 1990 an infection consultant has been regularly employed and this probably reduced reporting bias [31]. The most common pathogens isolated remain GPC (especially Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidevmidis), although G N R and mixed infections have been frequently described in recent reports [8,9,14,26,32,33]. Surgical wound infection is generally attributed to exogenous microbial seeding during an operation, and the occurrence of such seeding during the postoperative period is viewed as being uncommon [34].…”