Evaluation for Postoperative Infections Following Cutaneous Punch Biopsies in Dogs and Cats: 154 Cases (2013-2018)

Antimicrobial stewardship is becoming more important every day with increasing bacterial resistance and limitations on antibiotics. Prophylactic antibiotics are not necessary with all procedures, which has been shown previously with a vari-ety of human and veterinary surgeries. Medical records were retrospectively evaluated for cases who had a cutaneous punch biopsy performed between 2013 and 2018 including the following information: species, signalment, concurrent diseases, concurrent medications, location of biopsy, histopathologic diagnosis, and bacterial infections postoperatively. The prevalence of secondary infections, due to punch biopsies in all animals, was 1.9% and further divided into 2.3% (3/128) of dogs and 0% (0/26) of cats. It was determined that the relative risk of developing complications from punch biopsy was 0.06 (0.01-0.93) when diagnosing a dermatologic disease versus a cutaneous mass (neoplastic and nonneo-plastic), which was statistically significant. The risk increased 2.16 (0.16-59.91) times if the biopsy site was the trunk, which includes the neck, thorax, and abdomen. These results indicate that in veterinary medicine, postoperative compli-cations are uncommon with cutaneous punch biopsies. The administration of prophylactic antibiotics in dogs and cats is unnecessary when performing a punch biopsy when there is no infection present at the time of biopsy. (J Am Anim Hosp Assoc 2022; 58:249-253. DOI 10.5326/JAAHA-MS-7249)