[Prospective randomized study of the comparison of the effectiveness of cefoxitin (triple dose) and cefuroxime (single shot) in preventive perioperative use of antibiotics in abdominal surgery].

In a prospective, randomized trial in 200 patients who underwent abdominal surgery, we compared the prophylactic effect of a single dose of 1.5 g Cefuroxime against three doses of 2 g Cefoxitin. The incidence of wound infections was 8.2% in both groups. No difference was found between the two groups in the incidence of other infections except for urinary tract infections, whose frequency was twice as high in the Cefuroxime-treated group. In all patients we swabbed material from the anastomosis for microbiological investigation. However, these results did not enable the prediction of a wound infection or the determination as to which specimen caused the infection. In our pharmacokinetic investigations we obtained better results in the Cefuroxime-treated group due to the drug's longer half-life. On the other hand, we found extreme interindividual variation in the results obtained in both groups. This not well known factor probably raises the incidence of wound infection.