Open heart surgery patients have additional risks arising from the special nature of the operative procedure. And postoperative infections in patients with extracorporeal circulation are associated with high incidence of serious sequelae. To investigate the incidence and organisms of contamination, and the relation between the duration of extracorporeal circulation and contamination, following study was done. Eighty-four of the open heart surgery patients were examined with cultures from the blood and priming solution before and after bypass. 1. Cultures before bypass were sterile, but 2 cases of cultures from the blood and priming solution after bypass were positive, and culture positive group was 5% of all patients. 2. The organisms were Gram-negative, aerobic coliform bacilli; 3. The culture positive group had significantly longer bypass time.