Measures for preventing wound infections during elective open surgery for colorectal cancer: scrubbing with gauze.

In addition to the general surgical-site infection prevention measures in colorectal cancer surgery, we performed a simple subcutaneous scrubbing procedure with gauze at the time of abdominal closure, which reduced the incidence of wound infections. There are 289 patients whose primary colon cancer lesions were removed by elective surgeries. They were divided into Group A (74 patients with no wound infection prevention measures who were treated from 2002 to 2003), Group B (76 patients with wound infection prevention measures who were treated from 2007 to 2008), and Group C (139 patients with subcutaneous scrubbing with gauze plus the measures in Group B who were treated from 2009 to 2012). The incidence in Group A was 23%, while the corresponding values in Group B and Group C were 14.5% and 2.9%, respectively. The incidence of wound infections was substantially reduced by additional subcutaneous scrubbing with a saline solution and gauze during closure of a surgical incision. This very simple procedure was considered useful for surgical site infection prevention.