The Role of Antibiotics in Full Thickness Skin Graft Survival for Facial Reconstructive Surgery

Antibiotics are sometimes prescribed to patients who have had reconstructive surgery of wounds on their face using skin grafts. But, it is not yet known whether antibiotics improve the healing of skin grafts and reduce the risk of infections after surgery in these patients. It is known that antibiotics, like all medications, have side-effects although these are rare. This research study is designed to show us whether antibiotics improve wound healing or not, so that we may determine if we should continue using antibiotics even if they have side-effects in some patients. Our hypothesis is that patients treated with post-operative, systemic antibiotics will demonstrate a statistically significant improvement in the survival of their facial full thickness skin grafts compared to patients who are not treated with systemic antibiotics.