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Study finds only half of surgery patients receive recommended antibiotics

Patient Safety Monitor Alert, February 24, 2005

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Although giving patients antibiotics before their operations is recommended to prevent surgical infections, only about half of patients undergoing major surgery actually receive them, according to Use of Antimicrobial Prophylaxis for Major Surgery, a study released on February 21.

Multiple medical groups have issued guidelines stating that patients undergoing major surgery should receive intravenous antibiotics one hour or less before the start of the operation, according to a Chicago Tribune article. Studies show that patients should stop the antibiotic within 24 hours after surgery so they do not develop resistance to it.

But Dale Bratzler, MD, president of the American Health Quality Association and lead author of the study, found that these guidelines are not always practiced. The study, published in the Archives of Surgery, found that all 34,000 Medicare patients Bratzler looked at were administered a prophylactic antibiotic and 93% received the right drug, but only 56% received it within one hour of their incision.

"If you give it too early or too late, it's like giving nothing," said John Segreti, MD, an infectious disease expert at Rush University Medical Center. "People don't understand that."

To read an abstract of the study in the Archives of Surgery, click here.

To read the complete Chicago Tribune article, click here.

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