Surgical antibiotic prophylaxis: Are you doing it right?

Surgical site infection (SSI) places an enormous burden of disease on perioperative healthcare services. Its prevalence as a hospital-acquired infection (HAI) is second only to urinary tract infections.¹ The consequences in the short term include a protracted hospital stay, significantly increased healthcare costs and a higher mortality rate in certain types of surgery.² Patients who develop an SSI have a five-fold increase in hospital readmissions, are 60% more likely to be admitted to ICU and are twice as likely to die.³ SSI incidence rates have thus become an important outcome measure of the quality of surgical care.² Surgical antibiotic prophylaxis (SAP) is one component of broader strategies to prevent SSI. A comprehensive discussion on the prevention of SSI falls beyond the remit of this article which will focus solely on SAP.