Surgical antisepsis as a quality indicator for patient safety

Objective: to analyze surgical skin antisepsis in clean surgeries as a process indicator for surgical site infection prevention in a university hospital in the central-western region of Brazil. Method: retrospective analytical cross-sectional study that analyzed the records of 700 medical records of patients older than 18 years submitted to clean surgery. A descriptive statistical analysis was performed. Results: 50.9% (n = 356) records were considered adequate, in which there was degermation followed by antisepsis. Inadequacies were observed in 40.2% (n = 282);in 16.4% (n = 115) there was only antisepsis, even with prior indication of degermation and 23.8% (n = 167) only degermation. In 5.9% (n = 41) of the cases, there was no record of the solution employed and 3.0% (n = 21) did not contain a record of the procedure. Conclusion: inadequacies in surgical skin antisepsis occur routinely, being able to interfere with patient safety and contribute to higher rates of surgical site infection.