Surgical site infection is one of the most common hospital infections and surgical complications.
Appropriate administration of prophylactic antibiotics is, therefore, important to reduce surgical site
infection rate. The use of prophylactic antibiotics in Korea tends to be too long and clinical
confirmation of safe reduction of oral antibiotics use is mandatory. This is a preliminary report on the
results of reducing oral antibiotics from 5 to 2 days in clean plastic surgery patients. Patients who
underwent clean operation under local anesthesia between June 2008 and December 2008 were
included in this study. The patients were divided into two groups, and they received oral antibiotics
for 2 (group O2) or 5 (group O5) days. Complication rates, related expenses, and patients’ complaints
regarding the medication were compared between the two groups, considering the intravenous
antibiotics use. There was no significant systemic or infection-related complication. An overall
complication rates were 2.8% in group O2, 4.8% in group O5. All the complications were regional and
required no surgical intervention. There were no significant differences between total (p=0.72), intravenous
antibiotics administered patients (p=0.08), and intravenous antibiotics non-administered
patients (p=1.00). Oral antibiotics could safely be reduced to 2 days in clean plastic surgery excluding
intravenous antibiotics.