Prolonged versus short course of Antibiotic prophylaxis in clean general surgery

Objective: to compare the effect of prolonged (5 day) versus short term (1 day) antibiotic prophylaxis in preventing surgical site infection (ssi) in clean-non implant general surgery. material and methods: this randomized control trial was conducted in surgical a ward,khyber teaching hospital,peshawar from may 2009 to december 2009. sixty eight consecutive patients aged 13-29 years who underwent clean,non-implant general surgery were included. they were equally divided into two groups. group a received short term while group b received prolonged antibiotic prophylaxis. all the patients were assessed for 30 days postoperatively for the development of surgical site infection. data was recorded and analyzed using spss version 10.0. chi square test was performed and p-value < 0.05 was considered significant. results: out of 68 patients 3 (4.4%) developed ssi,2 (5.9%) in group a and 1(2.94%) in group b. the ssi rate between two groups was statistically insignificant (p value 0.55). conclusion: short term antibiotic prophylaxis in clean general surgery is sufficient to reduce the rate of ssi.