Methods

Between January 2010 and May 2010, patients presenting with simple traumatic wounds or lacerations in different parts of the body, highly contaminated with soil, debris or feces in emergency department of a referral educational hospital in Tehran (Rasul-Akram hospital), Iran, went for primary closure. All of the patients were provided prophylactic antibiotic, however, prescribed for one group (A) of patients for 2 days and other group (B) received for 5 days, according to the physician concerned. As these treatments were routine, we selected 70 patients from each group using table of random numbers. The patients were warned about the signs of infection including long-lasting erythema, purulent discharge and inflammation and were supposed to inform the concerned physician in any of such alarming situations. Oral Cephalexin 500 mg qid was prescribed for all patients enrolled for prophylaxis treatment.

Results

On follow-up 11 (8.2%) patients were found to develop sutured site infection (6 out of 70 (8.57%) in group A, and five out of 70 (7.14%) in group B (P= 0.31)). There was no statistical difference between infection rates between men (8.6%) in comparison to women (6.25%)(P> 0.05; CI= 95%).

Conclusion

Our study showed that 2-day prophylactic antibiotic therapy using Cephalexin is at least as effective as a 5-day regimen in relation to development of surgical site infection in patients with simple traumatic contaminated wounds or lacerations.