Nevis surgeon dismisses reports of increased wound infection rate

Friday, October31, 2003

CHARLESTOWN, Nevis: Medical Chief of Staff and General Surgeon, at Nevis' Alexandra Hospital, Dr Cardell 'Bal' Rawlins, has dismissed as alarming, reports carried by a local weekly newspaper in the Federation to the effect that surgical procedures had been placed on hold due to an increase in the rate of wound infections at the hospital.

According to Dr Rawlins, the 3.5 percent wound infection rate at the facility is one of the lowest rates in the world.

Speaking on Nevis TV on Wednesday night, Dr Rawlins said that the article had portrayed the hospital as having been in a state of panic. 

"What we are saying is the situation as represented by the article in the newspaper as one of panic, creating a mass hysteria in Nevis, is absurd, is nonsensical and is definitely not true," reported the General Surgeon. 

"The paper went further and stated that surgical procedures were placed on hold. I beg to differ. Like any prudent health care institution, like any prudent surgeon, when there appears to be a deviation from the norm, one has to investigate and find out what the problem is. And so we did, like any place anywhere else," he said. 

Dr Rawlins nonetheless went ahead to say that for the last two months of this year, there had been an increase in surgical wounds infections. He pointed out that he was duty bound to admit that because in his line of business, one cannot shirk the responsibility of the facts, but to deal with the situation as it is. 

"Our infection rate at Alexandra Hospital for this year, barring the last two months, was 3.5%," commented Dr Rawlins. "If we were to include the last two months, in those numbers, our infection rate is 6.0%. To give you a bit more information, for the year to date at the Alexandra Hospital theatre, we have done 329 operative procedures. 21 of those wounds got infected."

"I would hasten to add here that according the Centre for Disease Control in the USA, the infection rate at hospitals across the US, the average is 6.2 percent, with the range ending in the upper limit of around 14 percent," said the General Surgeon. "So at some hospitals there it is at 14 percent infection rate. We normally run a 3.5% infection rate."

Asked what had been the cause of the increase, Dr Rawlins explained they tried to investigate the cause of this increase in wound infection rate and what they did was that they sent cultures from the patients' wounds and also from different areas of the surgical theatre to the lab at the JNF Hospital in St. Kitts, whose results indicated that there were no organism.

They later sent more cultures to Antigua and received the same answer, and decided to turn to the French island of St. Barths. "Within three to four days, St. Barths was able to identify the cause of our problem. What they found was that we had a bacteria called Pseudomonas, which had infiltrated and colonised the air conditioning units."

He denied that surgical procedures had at any time been put on hold. The hospital continued to do essential surgeries, while with non-essential surgeries the patients were given two options, to either wait until the cause of the problem had been found and rectified, but if they chose not to wait, were offered the opportunity of going elsewhere, and were mostly referred to St. Kitts.

The bacteria and its mode of spreading are not unique by any sense of the word, neither in Nevis nor in the rest of the world, said Dr Rawlins. "In early October in Mexico City, there is one hospital which had a similar problem. 15 of those patients died, and none of our patients has died. In the US city of Philadelphia there was a similar problem several years ago and they too found their problem to be isolated to the air condition unit." 

The air conditioning units in the operating theatre have been removed, and will be replaced with brand new air conditioning units. The facility will also increase the frequency of the cleaning of the air conditioning units, observed Dr Rawlins. 

  Back...

  Most popular articles: viewed, printed and e-mailed

  Printable version