Surgeons instruct the patients to avoid postoperative bathing and dress the wounds until the sutures are removed. All wounds were sutured at the end of surgery and kept undressed. Participants received a tap water body bath where the water covered the wound after 24h of surgery. The control group were asked not to wet the dressed surgical site until wound inspection on days 3 and 5. The patients were followed up in the surgery clinic on days 14 and 30 after surgery, when age, sex and type of surgery-matched controls' surgical site infection was significantly high in clean/contaminated and contaminated appendicectomy, breast lump excision, inguinal herniotomy and tendon repair surgeries. In contaminated appendicectomy, clean/contaminated and contaminated herniotomies postsurgical infections other than surgical site infection were significantly low in test groups. Early mobilisation, keeping the surgical wounds moist and providing a clean environment are suitable to minimise the surgical wound and other associated infections.
Keywords: Surgical site infection / Clean/contaminated and contaminated surgeries / Undressed stitched incision / Postoperative bath and surgical site infections.