Surgical Antibiotic Prophylaxis in Small Animal Surgery: A Retrospective Outcome-Based Study from the Veterinary Teaching Hospital of Naples

Hospital-acquired infections in operating rooms are contributing factors to the increasing presence of pathogens, with surgical site infections being the most frequent among them. Surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis is administered to minimize the risk of developing surgical site infection. Surgeons are responsible for weighing the benefit of surgical site infection-risk reduction for the individual patient afforded by prophylactic antimicrobial administration against the broader societal risk from such use. The aim of this study was to analyze the data on surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis related to patient status, surgery duration, wound classification and the occurrence of surgical site infection in two operating rooms of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital of Naples from January 2023 to January 2024. Two hundred seventy-seven surgical procedures met the inclusion criteria. For soft tissue clean-contaminated procedures and clean orthopedic surgeries not involving implants, no statistically significant difference was observed between the various antibiotic protocols used and surgical site infection; this finding supports the possibility of avoiding antibiotic use for these procedures. In contrast to previous reports, this study identified a statistically significant association between ASA status and surgical site infection; no correlation was found between surgical duration and the occurrence of infection. Further research on antibiotic use and risk factors associated with surgical site infection will be crucial to strengthen clinical guidelines.