Intraoperative culturing during surgery for acute appendicitis.

Consecutive records of 608 patients who underwent appendectomy for suspected acute appendicitis were retrospectively analyzed to evaluated the necessity and usefulness of intraoperative cultures. There were no operative deaths and postoperative infectious morbidity was 6.4%. Positive cultures were only weakly predictive of postoperative infection. Culture results did not influence selection of antibiotics. Routine intraoperative culturing during appendectomy is costly and unnecessary, except in patients at high risk.