The compliance of surgical prophylactic antibiotics with standard protocols in Imam Reza teaching hospital of Birjand, Iran

Taking unnecessary or inappropriate prophylactic antibiotics can cause infections with resistant organisms. The present study aimed to investigate administration prophylactic antibiotics in surgery ward and its compliance with standard protocol in Imam Reza teaching hospital of Birjand, Iran.

This descriptive-analytical study was performed to evaluate the pattern of prophylactic antibiotics on patients who underwent surgical operations from October to December 2019. A checklist including demographic information, type of prophylactic antibiotics, dose and duration of using drug, type of surgery, and compliance with standard protocol was used. The validity and reliability of the checklist were evaluated and confirmed prior to the study. All eligible patients were enrolled and the information of the prescribed drugs in the surgical wards was compared with the Schwartz’s principles of surgery as standard protocol.

Out of a total of 300 patients, 187 (62.3%) were male. Among the patients, 155 (51.7%) cases underwent general surgery, 119 (39.6%) cases orthopedic surgery, and 26 (8.7%) cases neurosurgery. The most popular prescribed antibiotics were cefazolin (170 cases) and ceftriaxone + metronidazole (67 cases). Furthermore, the maximum antibiotic administrations were two days (127 cases) and one day (93 cases). More importantly, 67.7% and 92.3% of the patients were in compliance with the standard protocol in terms of the type and time of administration, respectively.

Our results showed that duration and route of administrating antibiotics were consistent with the standard protocol, but the type of drugs and indication did not match.