title: Infected surface wound: an experimental model and a method for the quantitation of bacteria in infected tissues.
abstract: Methods for the quantitation of bacteria in infected tissues must be rigidly standardized to insure uniformity of results. In this communication we report on a laboratory animal model for the study of surface wound infection and the development of a standardized method for the quantitative estimation of bacteria in infected surface wound tissue by mechanical tissue homogenization and serial dilution. Parallel comparative studies demonstrated that a moist-swab sampling procedure detected only 10% of the bacteria recoverable by a surface-wash procedure. Either tissue homogenization or surface-wash procedures recovered significantly more bacteria from contaminated surface wounds than were obtained by surface-swab sampling techniques.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001419:Bacteria / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D001431:Bacteriological Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation; D002452:Cell Count; D003470:Culture Media; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D005260:Female; D009132:Muscles; D011550:Pseudomonas aeruginosa / Q000254:growth & development / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D016038:Skin Transplantation; D013997:Time Factors; D014020:Tissue Extracts; D014182:Transplantation, Autologous; D014946:Wound Infection / Q000382:microbiology*
chemical_list: D003470:Culture Media; D014020:Tissue Extracts