[Increasing compliance with a surgical antibiotic prophylaxis protocol in the Urology Service.]

Surgical site infectionis the most common nosocomial infection in Spain. Theuse of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis (SAP) in clinical practice is frequently inadequate, confirming the need to adopt prevention strategies for this kind of infections. In this sense, promoting actions to improve the SAP in order to reduce surgical site infections is an unavoidable commitment of every surgical department.

To evaluate the adequacy of the PAQ after PAQ system implementation based on the use of prophylaxis protocols in compliance with the quality indicator sestablished in the Urology Department.

Retrospective observational study of the SAP of the surgical procedures performed in the Urology Service of a Spanish tertiary-level hospital. An intervention based on the introduction of the prophylaxis protocols was performed. Each prophylaxis kit contains sufficient antibiotic doses to perform an adequate PAQ with a registration form where the administration of doses is recorded. A period of pre-intervention (2005-2010) and post-intervention (2012-2017) were established  and the differences in the values were determined in the following six quality indicators: indication of SAP (indicated and administered prophylaxis), antibiotic selection (according to established protocol), dose and route of administration (therapeutic dose and intravenous route), time of administration of the first dose (between15 min and 1 hour before the surgical incision), intraoperative dose (necessary if the surgery is prolonged more than twice the half-life of the antibiotic or there is significant bleeding) and duration (not to exceed 24 hours).

Compliance with the selection of the antibiotic,the time of administration of the first dose, the duration of prophylaxis and the overall adequacy of the SAP increased after the introduction of prophylaxis protocols (p <0.001).

The use of prophylaxis protocols promotes an adequate SAP as it facilitates the appropriate antibiotic selection (active substance, dose and route) and helps to prevent SAP from being unnecessarily prolonged.