Background: Postoperative intracranial neurosurgical infections (PINI) complicate < 5% neurosurgeries. Scarce attention was dedicated to the extension and characteristics of its antimicrobial management considering their high morbidity, not negligible mortality, delayed hospital stay and increased healthcare costs.
Methods: We analyzed retrospectively (2014-2023) 162 PINI from eight Spanish third-level academic hospitals.
Results: Elective clean craniotomies after tumor or vascular causes were the leading procedures. Epidural abscess (24.7%), scalp infections (19.8%), postsurgical meningitis (16.7%) and cranioplasty infections (16.7%) were the most frequent PINI. Gram negative bacteria (38.6%) and Staphylococcus spp (28.6%) were the predominant isolates. Overall 85.2% patients underwent pus drainage, mostly by craniotomy (40.3%). Interestingly 34% were already receiving antibiotics for extracranial infections before developing PINI while 16.8% did not receive pre-operative antibiotic prophylaxis. In total 77.2% patients started a combined intravenous (IV) antimicrobial therapy, of which 85.2% switched after 5 days to a second-line IV antibiotic regimen, in 41.3% cases combined, after pus culture results, for a median of 21 days. Overall 61.1% patients continued on oral antimicrobials after hospital discharge, 30.3% as a combined regimen, for a median of 42 days. Complete cure was obtained in 81.5% cases, while 11.1% relapsed, 7.4% failed to cure and 6.8% died after PINI complications. In the multivariate analysis oral antimicrobial therapy after hospital discharge (p = 0.001) was significantly associated with PINI cure with no effect on survival.
Conclusions: We conclude that an extended 6 weeks sequential IV and oral antimicrobial therapy in addition to neurosurgical correction increases PINI cure rate with no effect on survival.
Clinical trial number: Not applicable.
Keywords: Antimicrobial therapy; Cure; Intracranial infections; Mortality; Neurosurgery.
© 2024. The Author(s).