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.