A study published in JAMA Network Open examined the use of antibiotics among patients undergoing common urological procedures.
Iowa City-based University of Iowa Health Care researchers manually reviewed medical records of 375 patients who had one of three common urological procedures between January 2016 and July 2017 at five Veterans Affairs hospitals. They also studied administrative data from 29,530 patient records from the entire Veterans Affairs health system.
American Urological Association recommendations note that antibiotics should be limited to 24 hours following most urological procedures, after which antibiotic use would be curtailed.
However, the study shows that 50 percent of the patients were prescribed antibiotics in a way that did not follow the AUA guidelines. The most common deviation from the guidelines included giving patients antibiotics without a clear indication for longer than 24 hours following a procedure (47 percent). Patients were often given antibiotics for three to five days after the procedure.