Prolonged Perioperative Antibiotics: A Hidden Problem.

Objectives: National guidelines generally recommend 24 hours or less of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis. In a freestanding, regional children's hospital, we evaluated the duration of antibiotic surgical prophylaxis to identify targets for standardization of practice.

Methods: All procedures performed in 2017 were extracted from our local data warehouse; those involving an incision were considered a surgical procedure and correlated to antibiotic data.