Antibiotic prophylaxis in clean general surgery.

OBJECTIVE: To find out the incidence of surgical site infection in clean general surgery cases operated without prophylactic antibiotics. DESIGN: A comparative study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: The study was carried out in Combined Military Hospital, Pano Aqil Cantonment, from July 2003 to December 2004. PATIENTS AND METHODS: One hundred and twenty-four clean surgical cases operated without antibiotic prophylaxis between July 2003 and December 2004, were studied and these were compared with similar number of cases who received antibiotics. The data was collected and analyzed using software SPSS (version 10.0). Chi-square and student "t" test were used to analyze the association between antibiotics and wound infection. RESULTS: The most frequent operation was repair of various hernias, 69.3% in group A and 75% in group B. More operations were carried out between 21-30 years, 38.7% in group A and 41.9% in group B. Surgical site infection occurred in one patient (0.8 %) in each group. Chi- square test (0.636) applied to group A and B showed no association of infection and administration/ no administration of antibiotics (p > 0.25). The "t" test applied on group A and B (t=0) also showed no significant difference between administration of antibiotics/ no antibiotics and infection (p > 0.25). CONCLUSION: The use of prophylactic antibiotic in clean, non implant and elective cases is unnecessary.