Antibiotic prophylaxis before kidney transplantation

: The effectiveness of antibiotic prophylaxis was evaluated in the immediate postoperative period of renal transplantation (RT). Before RT, the patients were randomly assigned to one of the following groups: 1) cefotaxime (intravenous infusion of 1 g one hour before the operation). 2) Ceftriaxone (1 g i.v. given in a similar way). 3) Control (without antibiotics). Patients who required antibiotic therapy during the first 3 postoperative weeks were excluded. 20 recipients of cadaveric renal grafts were included in each group. There were 39 males and 21 females with a mean age of 39.9 years. One patient from the cefotaxime group (5%), 2 from the ceftriaxone group (10%) and 2 from the control group (10%) developed infection of the surgical wound, all due to grampositive organisms. 19 patients had urinary tract infections: 7 from the control group (35%), 7 from the cefotaxime group (35%), and 5 from the ceftriaxone group (25%). The development of wound infection was not correlated with urea, creatinine, hemoglobin or total protein levels, or with urinary tract infection or fistula, diabetes or fever. The mean packed red cell volume of the patients who developed wound infection was 24.7 +/- 1.2 vs 28.6 +/- 6.6 in those who did not (p less than 0.01). All patients with visible hematoma and 3 of 10 with perirenal blood collection had wound infection. It was concluded that antibiotic prophylaxis for renal transplantation was useless in our patients.