Background: Postoperative wound infections have an enormous impact on patient’s quality of life and contribute substantially to the financial cost of patient care. The potential consequences for patients range from increased pain and care of an open wound to sepsis and even death. Wound infections extend the average hospital stay by one week and increasing the cost of hospitalization by minimum of 20%. Appropriate antibiotics for prophylaxis in surgery depend on the most likely pathogens encountered during the surgical procedure and type of operative wound encountered during the surgical procedure. Inadvertent use of antibiotics is associated with Development of multi-agent drug resistance among nosocomial pathogens. The occurrence of new infections such as clostridium difficile colitis, respiratory tract infections Drug toxicity and allergy Enormous financial impact on health care costs. Objective: To know whether prophylactic dose of antibiotics is enough to prevent surgical siteinfections in post-operative period if there is no comorbidities and surgery is donewith complete aseptic precautions. Methodology: The patients who undergoes clean and clean contaminated surgeries in PK Das Institute of Medical Sciences, Vaniamkulam, Palakkad, Kerala over period of 2 years and who fulfill the criteria of study aredivided randomly into two different groups (70 cases and 70 controls). Routineinvestigations done in both groups. And all other parameters are kept similar like preoppreperations and intra-op strategies. Case group received only prophylacticantibiotic and control group received post-operative empirical antibiotics also. 70patients in case group contain 35 clean cases and 35 clean contaminated cases. 70patients in control group also divided like this. Results: Out of the 35 clean cases in study group 3 got SSI. Out of 35 clean contaminated cases in study group 7 got SSI Out of 35 clean cases in control group 4 got SSI Out of 35 clean contaminated cases in control group 8 got SSI Conclusion: The use of prophylactic antibiotics alone is as effective as post-op empirical therapy in preventing SSI. This will also avoid unnecessary antibiotic resistance and will reduce the cost of treatment.

Keywords: Prophylactic; Empiric therapy; Wound Infections; Antibiotic resistance.