Postoperative pneumonia and urinary-tract infection: epidemiology and prevention.

Hospital-acquired pneumonias and urinary-tract infections are important causes of morbidity and mortality in surgical patients, and a great deal of effort has been expended on infection control strategies to prevent their occurrence. Prophylactic antibiotics, used either systemically or topically, are not routinely recommended for the prevention of either of these infections. The beneficial effects of these agents are transient, and they are often in association with the acquisition of colonization or infection with resistant bacteria. New approaches for infection control, not involving antibiotic agents, are being developed to lower the infection rates of both hospital-acquired pneumonias and urinary-tract infections to an irreducible minimum.