[Antibiotic prophylaxis in the operating room]

Abstract

Background: There are growing interests in perioperative preventation of surgical site infection, since the World Health Organization has published surgical safety checklist with the slogan "safe surgery saves lives" in 2008. According to the surgical safety checklist, the surgical team needs to check whether antibiotic prophylaxis has been given within 60 minutes of skin incision. In this study, we investigated whether anesthesiologists in our institution completed the administration of antibiotics before skin incision.

Methods: Anesthetic records of patients who had undergone elective surgery between April to October 2011 were collected. The records were retrospectively analyzed to examine whether administration of antibiotics had been completed before skin incision or not.

Results: Although all the anesthesiologists were aware of the necessity of antibiotic prophylaxis, the administration of antibiotics before skin incision was not completed in 22.8% of 880 patients. The administration of antibiotics tended to delay patients receiving general surgery.

Conclusions: Anesthesiologists should have knowledge on the preventation of surgical site infection especially on antibiotic prophylaxis, because it starts in the operating room.