Frequency of Surgical Site Wound Infection in Elective Versus emergency Cesarean-Section

Abstract

Objective: To determine the frequency of surgical site wound infection among women undergoing elective versus emergency cesarean sections (C-section).

Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study was done at department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, ISRA University Hospital, from August 2025 to December 2025. Women undergoing cesarean section (elective or emergency), aged between 18 to 45 years, presented with singleton pregnancy at term (≥37 weeks of gestation) and who received standard prophylactic antibiotics preoperatively were included. Patients were categorized in two groups; women undergoing elective cesarean section were placed in Group I, and an equal number of women undergoing emergency cesarean section were kept in Group II. The rate of SSI was assessed during follow-up visits within 30 days postoperatively. All relevant data were entered and analyzed using SPSS version 26.0.

Results: Overall 170 patients were enrolled with maternal mean age of 29.88 ± 4.12 years, mean BMI of around 28.28 ± 3.18 kg/m², and average gestational age of 38.34 ± 4.44 weeks. Surgical site infection (SSI) was noted in 13(15.3%) cases of emergency group and in 6(7.1%) patients of elective procedures, representing higher infection rate in emergency cases, (p = 0.994). Additionally, there was no significant association found of booking status, residential status, SES, anemia and BMI with overall SSI occurrence, p-values were quite insignificant (p>0.05).

Conclusion: The surgical site wound infection rate was observed more frequent in emergency C-sectional group contrasted to elective procedures with a slight association to anemia, blood transfusion and raised BMI.