Antimicrobial prophylaxis is one of the main safety measures to be enforced when implanting any medical device; surveys of practice, however, have found poor compliance.

This study is based on analysis of 153 dedicated in-depth analysis forms sent to orthopedic surgeons who had reported an antimicrobial prophylaxis-related near-miss event (NME) during the year 2008 as part of their certification report to the official organization, Orthorisq (orthopaedic Patient safety risk management agency).

Antimicrobial prophylaxis guidelines exist in 95% of French centers, but in 14% are not available in the right place. 88% of orthopedic surgeons consider them well-adapted to their practice. Most declarations follow fortuitous discovery by the surgeon of an immediate peri-operative malfunction. Human causes were found in 92% of declarations, general organizational causes in 50% and material causes in 28%. Regarding corrective action, 65% of respondents reported implementing a second-order procedure, and only 20% were able to resume truly regular antimicrobial prophylaxis.

The main reason for poor or non-performance of antimicrobial prophylaxis was “omission by negligence or oversight”, reported in 56% of declarations. Proposals for improvement were: revised antimicrobial prophylaxis guidelines specifying “who does what”; guideline awareness checks on new, temporary and locum-tenens staff; patient involvement in personal data collection; and implementation of a check-list in line with WHO and French Health Authority recommendations. These improvement proposals were taken on board in the antimicrobial prophylaxis consensus update currently being drawn up by the French Society for Anesthesia and Intensive Care.

Level IV, Decision Analyses Study.