Protocol based Surgical Antimicrobial Prophylaxis in Endo-Urologic Surgeries: An Attempt to Convince the Surgeons to Follow the Guidelines

Surgical antibiotic prophylaxis (SAP) prevents infectious complications during surgery by administering an effective antimicrobial agent before surgery. There is, however, lack of adherence to the standard SAP administration protocol. We reviewed 576 surgeries and find that cefuroxime/cefazolin was used as SAP in less than 31% of surgeries followed by ceftriaxone and cefoperazone. In 61% of cases, SAP was continued for more than 24 hours and in 2/3rd more than one SAP was prescribed, we noted the best SAP compliance was for the timing of pre-operative dosage. We then selected a unit of urology and applied the recommended SAP protocol, and monitored the patient’s outcome. All the surgeries were endoscopic urological procedures and our protocol was effective in 97.7% of patients. Out of 89, 78(87.6%) surgeries went uneventful, whereas 11 (12.4%) had post-operative complications. Two out of 89 (2.2%) cases had UTI post-operatively which was considered as surgical site infection. following the EAU guidelines for antibiotic prophylaxis reduced antibiotic use without increasing postoperative infection rates and SAP should be followed as per the standard guidelines in other units also. This small study is a way forward for our HICC team to motivate other surgeons to follow the guidelines and become antimicrobial stewardship champions. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of developing and successfully implementing such protocols.