Current Treatment Guidelines for Postoperative Surgical Site Infection: Clinical Considerations in the Surgical Care Improvement Project Era

The Surgical care Improvement Project (SCIP) has standardized the choices and timing of use of prophylactic antibiotics for elective cardiovascular, gynecological, orthopedic (hip/knee arthroplasty), and colorectal operations with the goals being to reduce the incidence of surgical site infection (SSI) and also limit indiscriminate and overly lengthy use of antibiotics to avoid the development of resistant organisms We examined the results of the application of the SCIP regimen on SSI rates, microbiology, and outcomes after elective colorectal operations at our institution. We also compared the microbiology of the infections against the empiric regimens recommended by the Surgical Infection Society/Infectious Disease Society of America (SIS/IDSA) guidelines to assess for any emerging trends that would be useful for further study on a larger scale such as could be performed using the American College of Surgeons–National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) data set.