Antimicrobial Prophylaxis Overview of Current Surgical Infections

Abstract

Surgical wound infections are the second most common healthcare-associated infection. Although usually localized to the incision site, surgical wound infections can also extend into adjacent deeper structures; thus, the term surgical wound infection has now been replaced with the more suitable name, surgical site infection (SSI). The term ‘antimicrobial prophylaxis’ is that the administration of antimicrobial drug before or just after a person’s exposing to causative agent to prevent an infection. Nowadays, antimicrobial prophylaxis can be divided into two categories as surgical prophylaxis and nonsurgical prophylaxis. A large amount of antimicrobial prophylaxis includes surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis. It is known that there are some mistakes during the administration of surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis, such as incorrect indication, incorrect administration time of the antimicrobial drugs, unnecessary long term administration, and incorrect drug selection. Current approaches for the surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis are discussed in this review.