Timely Preop Antibiotics Should Reduce Wound Infections — Shouldn’t They?

Antibiotics given within a small preoperative window reduce postoperative wound infection rates in both animal and human studies. The data are so solid that adherence to this standard of care has become one of the performance measures by which hospitals are publicly rated. But how does it all sort out in real life?

Retrospective data from 9195 elective surgical procedures that were performed in almost 100 Veterans Affairs hospitals were analyzed to correlate the timely administration of antibiotics with wound infection rates. Overall, 86.4% of patients received antibiotics within the designated 1-hour window before skin incision (or within 2 hours for vancomycin and the quinolones); 4.7% of patients developed wound infections, with slightly,…