Introduction:

Acute appendicitis is the most common abdominal emergency in the world and the most common non-elective surgery, which is as an objective for the treatment of acute appendicitis (appendiceal perforation and abdominal sepsis), the use of subsequent antibiotics being a priority to surgery to prevent surgical site infections, however, currently, the use of antibiotics in patients operated on for appendicitis is not done indiscriminately and without a precise indication.

Objective:

To verify that the usefulness of antibiotics in the postoperative of patients with acute uncomplicated appendicitis are not necessary.

Material and methods:

An analytical, prospective and longitudinal study of patients with postoperative diagnosis of acute uncomplicated appendicitis was carried out during June 2017 to November 2018 at the “Dr. Aurelio Valdivieso” General Hospital, including 128 patients, divided into two groups in a simple random manner: 64 cases (without postoperative antibiotic) and 64 controls (with postoperative antibiotic: ceftriaxone or cefotaxime) evaluating postoperative infectious complications at 30 days and hospital stay, leukocytes and C-reactive protein on the 1st, 3rd and 10th day of surgery.

Results:

No significant differences were observed in both groups in the incidence of surgical site infection, where difference was appreciated was in the average hospital stay 2.16 vs 1.88 (p = 0.001).

Conclusions:

The use of antibiotic in the postoperative of uncomplicated acute appendicitis does not affect the incidence of surgical site infections, so its use should not be done systematically in all patients. The use of antibiotics in a prophylactic manner should be done as dictated by clinical practice guidelines, so that some variation in their use will cause an increase in the incidence of surgical site infection.

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