RESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: Surgical site infection (SSI) is a problem constantly uppermost in the minds of all surgeons, although the actual rate of occurrence is only 1-5% in general surgery. In neurosurgical fields, there have been a few papers published about efficacy of post-operative antimicrobial prophylaxis (PAMP) to prevent SSI, compared to well known effectiveness of pre-operative antibiotics. Thus, infection rates of short-term PAMP groups and those of long-term PAMP groups were investigated to evaluate the effectiveness of PAMP and the efficacy of short-term PAMP compared to long-term PAMP for prevention of SSI. METHODS: Between April 2010 and April 2012, we retrospectively analyzed the data of 35 patients in the aneurysmal neck clipping groups (short-term PAMP group: PAMP for 3 days and fewer, long-term PAMP group: PAMP for 10 days and more) and 79 patients in the microdiscectomy groups (short-term PAMP group: 3 days and fewer, long-term PAMP group: PAMP for 6 days and more). RESULTS: In aneurysmal neck clipping groups, SSI occurred 23.1% of short-term PAMP group and 9.1% of long-term PAMP group (p=0.3370). And in microdiscectomy groups, SSI occurred 6.7% of short-term PAMP group and 4.1% of long-term PAMP group (p=0.9840). CONCLUSION: There is no significant difference between the short-term PAMP group and the long-term PAMP group in terms of SSI, regardless of operation type. We therefore suggest that short-term PAMP usage could be an appropriate therapy for preventing SSI in clean neurosurgical operations.