Patients undergoing open GI surgery for Abdominal surgery

This is a prospective, observational study of patients undergoing open GI surgery. At the time of operation, samples will be collected from the incision site and GI tract. The study will follow patients up to 30 days postoperatively, monitoring for signs of SSI. Samples will be taken from all patients who develop SSI. Sequencing will be performed on a subset of samples based on our specific aims. Aim 1: conduct a case-control study of patients with SSI and age-, sex-, diagnosis-, and wound class-matched control patients without SSI, comparing microbiome alpha diversity and community composition with 16S RNA sequencing to determine the association with SSI. Aim 2: identify the strain of bacteria isolated from SSIs using shotgun metagenomic sequencing and determine whether the specific strain was present in the skin and gut at the time of operation.