Evaluation of Surgical Prophylactic Antibiotic Use in a Tertiary Care Hospital

INTRODUCTION: Antibiotic prophylaxis is one of the basic practices to prevent surgical site infections. For rational surgical prophylaxis, the right antibiotic should be given in the right dose at the right time. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the compliance of antibiotic use for surgical prophylaxis in our hospital with the guidelines for surgical antibiotic prophylaxis.
METHODS: Adult patients who underwent surgery in eight different surgical clinics of Ýzmir Health Sciences University Tepecik Training and Research Hospital between 20.01.2021 and 20.01.2023 were included in the study. The prophylactic antibiotics administered to these patients were retrospectively analyzed in terms of content, timing of administration, dose, and duration of use and evaluated for compliance with the surgical prophylaxis guidelines of our hospital.
RESULTS: A total of 1,379 patients were included in the study. The most common reasons for noncompliance were prolonged prophylaxis, incomplete prophylaxis, and wrong choice of antibiotic. The neurosurgery clinic was the most compliant clinic, while the cardiovascular surgery clinic was the most non-compliant clinic. It was statistically significant that the use of the surgical prophylaxis guideline was higher in the group given antibiotics compared to those not given antibiotics (p<0.001).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: It was observed that persuasive activities are needed to convince patients that full compliance with the surgical prophylaxis guideline is important for both safe surgery and rational antibiotic use, especially the abandonment of prolonged prophylaxis.