Preoperative Single Dose Intraincisional vs Intravenous Ceftriaxone in Preventing Surgical Site Infection Post-Hernioplasty Conducted at a Tertiary Care Centre at Chengalpattu, Tamil Nadu, India

Introduction: Among the hospital acquired infections, Surgical Site Infection (SSI) still remains as the major problem for surgeons. Inguinal hernia surgeries are considered as clean surgeries, incidence of SSI in posthernioplasty is found to be 3.1%-4.5%. But in tertiary care centres in developing countries like India incidence is found to be high 11-14%.

Aim: The aim of the present study was to compare the efficacy of preoperative single dose ceftriaxone infiltration at the incision site and preoperative Intravenous ceftriaxone only in preventing SSI in hernioplasty.

Materials and Methods: A prospective interventional study was conducted at SRM Medical College and Research Institute, Chengalpattu, Tamil Nadu, from May 2021 to October 2022 for a duration of 18 months in 100 Patients, who attended the surgical outpatient block or other known cases of inguinal hernia who were referred to the surgery department from other departments. They were divided into group A or group B randomly. Hernioplasty was done on these groups, preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative wound swab was sent for these patients. Postoperatively patients were followed up on 3rd, 7th and 14th day and assessed for development of SSI. The continuous variables were presented as mean and SD. The categorical variables were expressed in percentages. The significance of continuous scale data between two groups were determined using student t-test. The Chi-square/Fischer’s-exact test was used to evaluate the significance of the categorical data analysed. Data analysis was computed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 27 and Microsoft excel office 2019.

Results: Male preponderance was seen 91% in inguinal hernias. Most of the patients belonged to the age group of 41-60 (54%) years of age. Ten patients (20%) developed SSI who got i.v. antibiotic injection but only three patients (6%) developed SSI who got intraincisional antibiotic injection with a p-value of 0.037 (<0.05) showing significance. One patient developed haematoma for with re-exploration was done on Postoperative Day (POD) #3. Two patients developed wound gapping for which secondary suturing was done on POD #7 and suture removal was done on POD #21. For rest of the all the patient’s suture removal was done on POD #14. Intraopertive and postoperative and organism growth was seen only in the 13 patients who developed SSI. Most common organism isolated was staph, Aureus (38.5%, 5 cases). All 13 patients who developed SSI had some co-morbidity. Out of the 13 patients who developed SSI 11 patients (84%) had surgery for more than 30 minutes. Mean hospital stay was 3-5 days (87%).

Conclusion: In the present study, there was significant reduction in incidence of SSI in the group, which received preoperative single dose Intraincisional ceftriaxone than the other group which received only preoperative intravenous ceftriaxone. Preoperative intraincisional antibiotics significantly reduces the rate of SSI because of the higher concentration achieved at the incision site.