[Incidence of infected surgical wound and prophylaxis with cefotaxime in cesarean section]

Surgical wound infection after cesarean section varies from 2.5 to 16.1%, thus the utilization of antibiotic prophylaxis has increased routinely and irrationally. Despite this, we can still see cases of infections.

To determine if the antibiotic prophylaxis with cefotaxime is associated with the decreased incidence of wound infection in patients submitted to cesarean section without risk factors.

This study was carried out as a randomized clinical trial in patients submitted to cesarean section. Two groups were formed: in the first group we administered cefotaxime and the other one did not receive prophylaxis. The follow-up lasted 30 days to evaluate clinical data of infection.

We performed 3,300 cesarean in the studied period; 1,000 patients had the inclusion criteria to participate in the study. A surgical wound infection was observed in 31 (0.96%) patients without risk factors. In 14 of these patients we administered cefotaxime, and in 17 patients we did not use prophylaxis. The highest frequency of infection was observed in the group of 24 to 30 years old, with 16 patients (51.6%). The clinical data of infection were: dehiscence in 29 patients (93.5%), pus secretion in 23 (74.2%), and fever in only 3 (9.7%) of them. The hospital stay after the infection was of five days in 75% of the cases. When the use of cefotaxime as prophylaxis was analyzed in both groups we had an odds ratio of 0.82, which was not significant.

The use of cefotaxime in patients operated of cesarean does not have great transcendence since it does not reduce the infection incidence. The use of antibiotics in an irrational way implies a high cost, since the majority of the post-operation infections are not complicated, involving exclusively the skin and cellular subcutaneous tissue. Then, the cases with risk factors should be analyzed carefully for the cefotaxime administration.