Bacteriological Analysis Of Human Tissue Expanders

Tissue expander for clinical use has been lasting for 50 years. Nowadays, it is playing a very important role for reconstructive surgery. However, the complications of tissue expansion is still high, especially the incidence of infection. In order to find out the reasons of the infection, we designed the following study to investigate the infection complication influenced by serial filling process and other complications such as hematoma, leakage and extrusion of tissue expander for clinical prophylactic and remedial antibiotics.From Oct 3rd 2005 to Mar 8th 2006 we studied 53 tissue expanders of 33 persons continuously. The results of 2 expanders which silastic dome were placed outside the skin were excluded. We compared the bacteria culture results between the intra-expander and extra-expander groups. McNemar Test and Kappa Test were made between intra-expander and extra-expander groups of 51 tissue expanders. We found that the general positive rate of 53 tissue expanders was 20.75%, 1.89% was positive only inside the tissue expander, 16.98% was positive only outside the tissue expander and 1.89% was positive both inside and outside the tissue expander. The difference between two groups was statistical significant (P<0.05). The symmetry of two groups was bad...