This Article  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (31)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

William A. Altemeier, M.D.; William R. Culbertson, M.D.; Mark Vetto, M.D.

AMA Arch Surg. 1955;71(1):2-6.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

SOME OF THE current practices of antibiotic prophylaxis are becoming matters of considerable concern. Antibiotic therapy has unquestionably had a profound effect on the practice of surgery, but the persistent trend toward extending antibiotic prophylaxis indiscriminately to every patient undergoing an operative procedure is creating a number of serious problems.

In the first place, it has produced in many surgeons a false sense of security which is not based upon fact. The use of antibiotics may give an erroneous impression that everything possible has been done for the prevention of an infection and that any infection developing in the wound does so because of the failure of the antibacterial action of the agent used rather than the neglect of established surgical principles or important technical details. The occurrence of the infection is usually the result of inadequate removal of devitalized tissue and foreign bodies or the development of devitalized tissue postoperatively as the result of . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Surgery of the College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, and the Cincinnati General Hospital.

Footnotes
Recorded for publication March 29, 1955.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?