Preoperative urine culture fails to lower postoperative UTI risk: JAMA

The findings revealed that preoperative urine cultures held no significant association with a reduced risk of postoperative urinary tract infections (UTIs) or surgical site infections (SSIs). According to the IPTW analysis, the preoperative urine cultures were performed in 10.5% of the surgical procedures, while the adjusted odds ratios (AORs) for both UTI and SSI post-surgery remained largely unaffected. Even when focusing on orthopedic and neurosurgery cases that often involved prosthetic implants, this study found no link between preoperative urine cultures and reduced infection risks.

The study emphasized that these findings underline the need to reconsider the routine practice of preoperative urine cultures and subsequent antibiotic treatments before surgeries in cases involving prosthetic implants. The results advocate for the deimplementation of this practice which aligns with the recent guidelines that discourage such preoperative screenings.

Source:

O’Brien, W. J., Schweizer, M. L., Strymish, J., Beck, B. F., Au, V., Chan, J. A., Brown, M., Itani, K. M. F., Dukes, K. C., Walhof, J. F., & Gupta, K. (2024). Propensity Score-Weighted Analysis of Postoperative Infection in Patients With and Without Preoperative Urine Culture. In JAMA Network Open (Vol. 7, Issue 3, p. e240900). American Medical Association (AMA). https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.0900