The Use of Postoperative Antibiotics in Shoulder Arthroscopy Patients

Shoulder arthroscopy and related complications like deep tissue infections have increased in the last several decades. Practice patterns have shown significant consensus among arthroscopic surgeons supporting intraoperative pre-incision antibiotic usage and against postoperative antibiotic usage. While there is consensus in practice, the absence of robust guidelines for postoperative antibiotic prophylaxis after shoulder arthroscopy warrants further research.

The purpose of this study was to determine the incidence of infection after shoulder arthroscopy in patients treated with or without postoperative prophylactic oral antibiotics.

A retrospective review of shoulder arthroscopies was performed at an outpatient surgery center over a 10-year period. The primary outcome measured was infection following a procedure, initial encounter, or subsequent encounter as defined by International Classification of Disease, Tenth Revision - Clinical Modification (ICD-10 CM) codes T81.4XXA or T814XXD. Incidence of infection was calculated for both cohorts and a chi-squared test was used to determine the statistical significance of betweengroup differences in infection incidence. A priori and post hoc power analyses were performed to determine the sample size required for statistical power and statistical power of the findings given the final study sample size, respectively.

A total of 1,801 patients were included in the study. All patients received intraoperative pre-incision antibiotic prophylaxis. Prophylactic postoperative antibiotics were prescribed to 223 (12.38%) patients for varying durations following shoulder arthroscopy. There were zero cases of infection among patients who received antibiotics. There was one case (0.06%) of infection among the patients who did not receive antibiotics. This difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.71). Power analyses showed that the study was highly powered.

Postoperative prophylactic oral antibiotics did not reduce the risk of infection in patients undergoing shoulder arthroscopy.