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Are antibiotics prescribed normally with neuter surgery?

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  • Are antibiotics prescribed normally with neuter surgery?

    Is it standard to give antibiotics with a neuter surgery? Our quote from the vet includes a shot of antibiotics during surgery, and antibiotics to take home, as a preventative. Is this standard?

  • #2
    Yes usually. Some vets don't do antibiotics as standard protocol but IME most do.


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    • #3
      Ours did. He got anti inflammatory, antibiotics, and pain killers in his take home bag.

      ETA: Ferg had both neuter and pexy done at once.

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      • #4
        Ours did as well for both boys.
        Donna
        Max (DOB-Apr 28-2013; gotcha date-Aug 23-2013)
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        • #5
          I don't know about fullservice vets, but having worked for a low-cost, high-quality, high-volume spay/neuter clinic....
          Unless your vet is unsure of their sterile procedure, there should be no reason to give antibiotics as prophylaxis for standard neuter. We did not do routine antibiotics with any surgeries unless: skin infection in area where incision was to be made, other signs of systemic infection, or, on one occasion, possible breach in sterile technique.
          Obviously for a pyo we would start antibiotics prior to surgery and keep the patient on them and there were occasional feral cats who got a shot of Convenia to help with apparent systemic infections, but the majority of patients did not receive post-op antibiotics. We provided free rechecks if the owners were concerned about infection, and gave antibiotics in maybe a few percent of those cases, as for the most part what we were seeing in rechecks was minor tissue reaction to suture material or minor swelling from being overactive following surgery.

          This said, we didn't do pexies, it may be that it is more apropos to do prophy antibiotics for those since the gut is involved, but for a routine neuter that shouldn't take more than ten minutes, I fail to see the point in routinely giving prophy antibiotics unless the vet is not using sterile equipment.

          We did do standard analgesia both pre- and post-op and with dogs sent home tramadol (cats are slower to process the injected analgesia and thus didn't need take-home pain meds)
          I have had countless fosters, mostly cats, spayed and neutered by this vet, under this system, and never needed antibiotics. Our foster group has had hundreds of dogs and pups neutered and spayed by various vets and we don't use antibiotics unless the vet recommends it. I don't know how many of the local vets do it standard, but I am a bit wary when a vet wants to load a surgical patient with that many antibiotics as collegal mentioned.
          If it is a standard, scrotal neuter, why does the vet want a shot of antibiotics AND take home post-op abx? Seems a lot to me, makes me wonder if their sterile technique isn't up to snuff.

          To be clear, there are plenty of surgical events where I would find antibiotics appropriate for, but a routine spay/neuter on a healthy animal isn't one of them. If something pops up during surgery that isn't routine, that's something else. I could also understand if a vet maybe wanted antibiotics if they were doing a crypt neuter, although we didn't routinely use abx for those either.
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          • #6
            For our girls spay and pexy our vet did not suggest antibiotics...it was done laparoscopically so i'm not sure if that's why or not, but she recovered just fine.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by collegal View Post
              Is it standard to give antibiotics with a neuter surgery? Our quote from the vet includes a shot of antibiotics during surgery, and antibiotics to take home, as a preventative. Is this standard?
              20 years ago it was probably more commonly place than it is today. There is (with good reason) a general concern among both the public as well as human/veterinary healthcare professionals about the 'overuse' of antibiotics. I certainly perceive that there has been a shift the last few years towards not using antibiotics with routine neuters (provided there were no complications or breaches of aseptic technique as pointed out previously).
              Warren Briggs, DVM
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