Wound Bacterial Microbiota and Their Antibiotic Resistance: a Prospective Cohort Study of Hospitalized Patients Originating From the Syrian Armed Conflict

War-associated injuries often result in soft tissue and bone being contaminated with foreign material, leading to infection (Fares et al. 2013; Covey, Lurate, and Hatton 2000). Wound infections remain the greatest risk to life and restoration of function in war-wounded that survive the first few hours (Tong 1972; Murray 2008).

The Syrian armed conflict broke out in 2011 and quickly deteriorated. Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) runs an emergency trauma project in the Ministry of Health hospital in Ar Ramtha, Jordan, less than five kilometers from the Syrian border. At this facility patients from the Syrian armed conflict receive treatment for blast- and gunshot-injuries. Wounds are treated according to the International Committee of the Red Cross war surgery protocol (Giannou and Baldan 2010). Wound management and healing has been difficult and time consuming, often complicated by infections and antibiotic resistance.

Recommendations for treatment of war-associated infections are generally not supported by cohort studies (Murray et al. 2008). High rates of war wound infections caused by antimicrobial drug resistant organisms have been shown in the Middle East but reports generally only include combatants. Due to the use of body armor and forward medical therapy this data may not be applicable to a civilian setting. Furthermore, available studies are either performed on old wounds (Teicher et al. 2014) or on all available culture samples, disregarding infection signs (Sutter et al. 2011; Dau, Tloba, and Daw 2013). Without clinical signs of infection, routine collection of peri-debridement culture samples is inappropriate in war-associated injuries (Murray et al. 2008). The differentiation between contamination and infecting organisms is crucial in order to avoid unnecessary medication, especially limit the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics as overuse may lead to development of multi-drug resistant organisms (Eardley et al. 2011). Cultures collected from acute wounds with clinical signs of infection will be analyzed.