Prevention and Control of Postoperative Wound Infections Owing to Staphylococcus aureus

ATTENTION was called in a previous paper1 to the increasing number of antibiotic-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, or Micrococcus pyogenes (var. aureus), being recovered from hospital patients and personnel since the introduction of penicillin. Data were presented showing that the postoperative infection rate of clean wounds had increased over a five-year period (1949–1953) at the Massachusetts Memorial Hospitals despite the use of prophylactic antibiotics. Analysis of the hospital carrier rate and the floras of infected wounds at that time suggested that the increase in sepsis was related to an abnormally high carrier rate of penicillin-resistant Staph. aureus as . . .