Efficacy of intensive antibiotic regimens on postcraniotomy fever and cerebrospinal fluid examination results in patients with infratentorial surgeries

Postcraniotomy fever is a common complication in patients undergoing infratentorial surgeries. There are few studies about it and the efficacy of intensive antibiotic regimens, which remain to be studied. We carried out a retrospective study in patients undergoing infratentorial surgeries to analyze the factors associated with postcraniotomy fever and further investigated the efficacy of different antibiotic regimens on fever and abnormal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) results. Among the 115 patients, 74 (64.3%) had fever after craniotomy. Univariate analysis results showed that disease type, drainage tube placement, duration of drainage tube, and intraoperative bleeding volume were associated with postcraniotomy fever in patients undergoing infratentorial surgeries (P < .05). The multivariate analysis results showed that the duration of drainage tube (odds ratio = 1.010, 95% confidence interval: 1.232–6.178, P = .014) and duration of surgery (odds ratio = 1.010, 95% confidence interval: 1.002–1.017, P = .013) were associated with postcraniotomy fever in these patients. After treatment with different antibiotic regimens, the changes of white blood cells, sugar, chlorine and protein in CSF in patients with intensive antibiotic regimens were −638.48 × 10(6)/L, 0.25 mmol/L, −0.76 mmol/L and −0.16 g/L respectively, which did not show significant differences when compared with ordinary antibiotic regimens (P > .05). Most cases of fever at the early stage after craniotomy in patients with infratentorial surgeries were nonintracranial infectious. Intensive antibiotic regimens did not show obvious advantages in improving the body temperature and CSF examination results. It is not necessary to use intensive antibiotic regimens too early, such as carbapenems or linezolids.