[Infection after long lasting procedure in neurosurgery]

A retrospective study was performed to appreciate the frequency of infectious complications following long duration neurosurgical procedure with or without antibiotic prophylaxis. Among the 6,702 surgical procedures studied 87 lasted more than 6 hours. The frequency of wound infections of those 87 patients was 13.8% whereas it was only 1.43% for the whole group. There was no significant statistical difference between patients who were treated with antibiotics and those who were not. The high frequency of infection by Klebsiella (25% of the identified germs) was caused by a contamination of the intensive care unit. Duration of the surgical procedure, synthetic material and repetitive procedures are important points to analyse when comparing the different publications. If any antibiotic prophylaxis is to be used, it must be adapted to the microbial environment of each care unit.