Urinary Catheters after Total Joint Replacement Surgery

To the Editor: Michelson et al. (Aug. 11 issue)¹ reported that the short-term use of an indwelling catheter caused no more infection than did intermittent bladder catheterization as needed for acute retention in the day or two after joint-replacement surgery. Unless I missed it, an important omission from this article was specific reference to the dose and duration of perioperative antibiotic therapy. I suspect that all the patients received an antibiotic, probably a cephalosporin and probably one with a long half-life. If, in fact, prophylaxis was continued for 24 hours (which is often the case), this treatment would have had.