[Clinical experience with piperacillin in the prophylaxis of post-operative infections]

Ninety patients who had undergone surgery have been treated with piperacillin as a prophylaxis for hospital infections. Twenty-two (24.4%) emergency operations and sixty-eight (75.6%) elective ones have been performed. Thirty-five open drainages, seven vacuum drainages and fifty-five urinary catheters have been placed. Post-operative infections occurred in 18 patients (20%), five of them submitted to emergency operations and thirteen submitted to elective operations. In eight cases an open drainage had been placed and in three cases a vacuum rate. The Author concludes that the hospital infections rate agrees with that occurring in the quoted sources; that open drainages, especially if placed through surgical wound, have main responsibilities for infections, and that piperacillin acted as a very well tolerated antibiotic and a highly manageable and effective one, offering therefore a good prophylaxis for hospital infections.