Implementing the Protocol of Perioperative Narrow-spectrum Antibiotic Prophylaxis in the Surgical Wards of Mofid Children’s Hospital in 2019 - 2020, A Comparative Study

Surgical procedures may be complicated by post-surgical infections. This study investigates the role of administering perioperative narrow-spectrum antibiotic prophylaxis in preventing post-surgical infections as compared to routine broadspectrum antibiotic usage in the surgical ward.

Narrow-spectrum perioperative antibiotic prophylaxis, in accordance with CDC guidelines, was implemented in our hospital in October 2019. In this quasi-experimental study, all the children (one month to fifteen years old) who underwent surgery from April to September 2019 and had received broad-spectrum antibiotics for various durations, as well as those operated after the implementation of the perioperative narrow-spectrum antibiotic prophylaxis plan (October 2019 to March 2020) were enrolled. Surgical wound type (clean, clean/contaminated, contaminated, and dirty), type and site of the infection, and the patient’s age and sex were recorded. Cases with postoperative infections were followed up in the two groups during hospitalization and for 30 days (or 90 days if a prosthetic material was implanted) after discharge. The rate of post-surgical infections was compared between the two groups by the Mann-Whitney and chi-squared tests.

In total, 4308 cases were enrolled in the first six months and 3650 in the second six months of the study. The rate of postsurgical infections in the first group was 31/4380 (23.7%) as compared to 22/3650 (20%) in the second group (P-value = 0.3365)

There was no increase in the frequency of post-surgical infections after the implementation of the perioperative narrow-spectrum antibiotic prophylaxis protocol. Reducing the use of antibiotics before surgery shrinks costs and antibiotic resistance without any effect on the post-surgical infection rate.