Irene Krøjer Hansen

Abstract

Master student: Irene Krøjer Hansen
Specialisation: Surgery
Project:

In a time where bacteria develop resistance in a pace a lot faster than the pharmaceutical industry develop new antibiotics vets with license to prescribe all types of antibiotics, as well as our human colleagues, need to use the antibiotics in the smartest way, and especially not misuse or over use.

Objective
The objective of this mini review is to investigate whether prophylactic antibiotics reduces the prevalence of surgical site infections (SSI) in dogs and cats.

Key question: Does the perioperative use of antibiotics reduce the occurrence of postoperative surgical site infections in dogs and cats? A Minireview.

Methods
Risk factors related to SSI, wound classification regarding cleanness and three categories of SSI are described and defined.

The data from three randomized blinded clinical trials of perioperative antibiosis versus placebo and two cohorts containing a treated and a not treated group are described and analyzed.

Conclusion
The conclusion is, that for dogs, perioperative antibiotics in soft tissue surgery operations lasting less than 90 minutes does not reduce the prevalence of SSI, unless the surgeon is a senior vet student. In orthopedic operations in dogs lasting less than 90 minutes results are conflicting, but the most recent study finds, that perioperative antibiotics does reduce the prevalence of SSI. Cats have only been a smaller part of the study population, therefore the results are only assumed to be valid for cats as well. One of the cohorts contain data for clean-contaminated and contaminated operations, and finds no reduction in prevalence of SSI, but the data are assumed to be biased by clinical evaluation whether to treat the patients with perioperative antibiosis or not. Since dirty is a risk factor for SSI, perioperative antibiosis reduces the prevalence of SSI in dirty wounds.