Postoperative antibiotic prophylaxis in clean-contaminated head and neck oncologic surgery: a retrospective cohort study.

Antibiotic prophylaxis is commonly used in head and neck oncologic surgery, due to the clean-contaminated nature of these procedures. There is a wide variety in the use of prophylactic antibiotics regarding the duration of application and the choice of agent. The purpose of this study was to determine whether short-term or long-term antibiotic prophylaxis has an impact on the development of head and neck surgical wound infection (SWI). Retrospective chart review was carried out in 418 clean-contaminated head and neck surgical oncology cases at our department. More than 50 variables including tumour type and stage, type of surgical treatment, co-morbidities, duration and choice of antibiotic prophylaxis, and the incidence of SWI were analysed. Following descriptive data analysis, Chi square test by Pearson and Fisher's exact test were used for statistical evaluation. Fifty-eight of the 418 patients (13.9 %) developed SWI. Patients with advanced disease and tracheotomy showed a significantly higher rate of SWI than those with early stage disease and without tracheotomy (p = 0.012 and p = 0.00017, respectively). However, there was no significant difference between the SWI rates in the short term and long term treatment groups (14.6 and 13.2 %, respectively; p = 0.689). Diabetes and body weight were not found to be risk factors for SWI. Long-term antibiotic prophylaxis was not associated with a decrease in SWI in the entire cohort of patients undergoing clean-contaminated major head and neck oncologic surgery. Our data confirmed the extent of surgery and tracheotomy as being risk factors for postoperative SWI.

Middle ear cholesteatoma: Compared diagnostic performances of two incremental MRI protocols including non-echo planar diffusion-weighted imaging acquired on 3T and 1.5T scanners.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: To compare diagnostic performances for cholesteatoma diagnosis of incremental MRI protocols including non-echo planar diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) performed on 3T and 1.5T scanners. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirty-nine patients with suspected cholesteatoma underwent 3T and 1.5T non-echo planar DWI and additional unenhanced T1-, delayed gadolinium-enhanced T1- and high-resolution T2-weighted standard acquisitions. Patients either underwent surgical tympanoplasty (n=21) or close clinicoradiological follow-up (n=18). Four radiologists independently and prospectively interpreted two incremental MRI protocols, differing in the magnetic field strength of the diffusion-weighted acquisition and comprising the three standard sequences. At each step, diagnostic performances were expressed as sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy. RESULTS: Forty middle ear lesions including 21 cholesteatomas were identified. Univariate and multivariate analysis did not demonstrate significant reader, sequence addition or DWI magnetic field effect on diagnostic performances. Concerning non-echo planar DWI alone, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy ranged between 90.5-100%, 68.4-100%, 76.9-100%, 90.0-100% and 82.5-95.0, respectively. CONCLUSION: Non-echo planar DWI for cholesteatoma diagnosis can be performed on 1.5T or 3T scanners indifferently. High sensitivity and negative predictive value and relatively lower specificity and positive predictive value are achieved by a single non-echo planar DWI protocol.