Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Prophylactic antibiotics are very common following tension-free inguinal hernia repair; however, indiscriminate use of antibiotics will increase the cost and antibiotic resistance of patients.
OBJECTIVE: To systematic review the effectiveness of prophylactic antibiotic administration in reducing postoperative wound infection rates in inguinal hernia repair.
METHODS: We searched PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, CBM, CNKI, VIP databases, and the data were analyzed using Review Manager 5.0.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Eight randomized controlled trials were included. The Meta analysis showed that there was significant difference between prophylactic antibiotic group and placebo group in surgical site infection rate [RR=0.68, 95%CI(0.49, 0.94)]; The heterogeneity analysis did not reach statistical significance neither for the sensitivity analysis [RR=0.78, 95%CI(0.56, 1.10)] nor in the sub-groups analysis[RR=0.63, 95%CI(0.16, 2.57) for comparison between β-lactam antibiotics and placebo] [RR=0.66, 95%CI(0.41, 1.06) for comparison between cephalosporins and placebo]. There was not enough evidence to support routine prophylactic antibiotic administration for inguinal hernia repair.