Infection in burn patients.

In a recently opened burn unit which used a semi-isolation technique to treat burn patients, burn bacteriology has shown the usual pattern of bacterial cultures i.e. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella and proteus; with the first two predominating. Comparison with a similar study done in 1974 revealed that Streptococcus faecalis was absent in these cultures, E. coli and S. aureus infection had decreased, the number of sterile wounds had increases, there was slight increase in P. aeruginosa infection. A survey of burn wound, throat and stool cultures of patients and attendants over a 2-week period revealed pathogenic S. aureus in 3 out of 26 throat cultures. Phage typing of these strains did not reveal the same strain in any wound cultures. Similar phage type was grown from wounds in two different cabins on two different dates. thus indicating cross infection. Persistence of similar phage type was also seen in wounds of one patient. Similar aeruginocine typing of P. aeruginosa was seen in wound cultures of two different patients; one of these, type 15, was also grown in stool of the third patient thus indicating transmission of infection from the stool of one patient to the wound of other patient and from the wound of one patient to the wound of other patient.