Microbial contamination of unsterile vs sterilized 3M™ Micropore™ tape on full-thickness skin graft donor wound: Clinical trial and evaluation.

Medical tape has been used for various purposes, including as postoperative dressing to reduce tension and achieve a fine-line scar. 3M™ Micropore™ is available in clean but unsterile packaging. Sterile tapes in developing countries are harder to find and more costly. Whether unsterile tape is safe to use on fresh wounds is an ongoing debate. We wanted to assess the true difference of bacterial load of sterilized and non-sterile tape by applying it on a postoperative surgical wound. Using experimental research with consecutive sampling, we evaluated different dressing on either the inguinal or abdominal full-thickness skin graft donor site during September 2023 and January 2024 a public hospital in Bandung, West Java. Groups were assigned to three different postoperative dressings: conventional Paraffin-impregnated gauze, sterilized, and non-sterile tape. We analyzed data of bacterial contamination on the tape, and bacterial growth through wound swab culture as well as clinical findings. We had a total of 30 samples. The bacterial load between all groups were not significantly different on day-0 or day-5 (p = 0.285 and p = 0.625). We observed statistically significant increase from the conventional and sterile tape group (p = 0.024 and p = 0.027). Clinical surgical site infection was not found. Median of bacterial count of the sterilized tape is 0 (0) CFU/cm2 and non-sterile tape is 0 (0-5) CFU/cm2 (p = 0.317). Most bacteria found in wound culture are skin normal flora, followed by endogenous normal flora and pathogens. This research shows that conventional dressing, sterile and non-sterile tape does not affect postoperative wound contamination as well as clinical surgical site infection.