Ceftriaxone as short-term antibiotic prophylaxis in orthopedic surgery: a cost-benefit analysis involving 808 patients.

This paper reports the results observed in 477 consecutive patients (from June to December 1996) undergoing orthopedic surgery and treated with a single preoperative dose of ceftriaxone, a long-acting cephalosporin, in comparison with those observed in a control group of 331 patients (from January to December 1995) receiving no antibiotic prophylaxis. Patients receiving ceftriaxone did better than those receiving no antibiotic prophylaxis in terms of postoperative infection rate (1.3% vs. 11.8%) and duration of hospital stay (on average 3.25 vs. 7.09 days, respectively). More importantly, administering ceftriaxone as a single preoperative injection led to a dramatic savings in terms of nursing effort, time and cost of prophylaxis per patient. It is concluded that the clinical results and economic implications seem to justify the use of ceftriaxone as a routine prophylactic antibiotic for patients undergoing orthopedic surgery.