Razi Journal of Medical Sciences

Carcinoma of the breast is considered to be the number one cause of death for women in many countries. Diversity of opinion and contraversies still exist among specialists in taking a unified treatment protocol in this disease. Although in the present century, many researchers and specialists have been doing extensive work on this problem which has resulted in a large volume of written material on carcinoma of the breast, very little research has been done on perioperative complications of mastectomy.

In this article we will show that the incidence of wound infection after mastectomy is very high and is many times greater than clean surgical cases, and even higher than clean - contaminated cases llkesuppuretive append icitis,

In this study we performed a retrospective 12 year, review on wound complications of modified radical mastectomies (MRM) on 105 cases. Although these complication rates were high, they were comparable with those of international literature. This study also compares the rate of wound infection in MRM which is a clean surgical wound with the same number of suppurative appendicitis which were also retrospectively studied in a two - year - period and proved statistically that the rate of infection in MRM is higher than that of suppurative appendectomies, which is a clean-contaminated wound.

In conclusion, factors which were thought to contribute to high rate of infection in a clean operation like that of MRM are discussed and preventive measure suggested.