Summary of findings 4. Head‐to‐head comparisons of antibiotics for prophylaxis in elective abdominal hysterectomy.

Head‐to‐head comparisons of antibiotics for prophylaxis in elective abdominal hysterectomy
Population: women having elective abdominal hysterectomy Settings: hospital Intervention: antibiotics Comparison: alternative antibiotics
Outcomes	Illustrative comparative risks	Relative effect (95% CI)	Number of participants (studies)	Quality of the evidence (GRADE)	Comments
	Antibiotics vs alternative antibiotics
Total postoperative infections ‐ early and late Abdominal wound infection Urinary tract infection Pelvic infection Other serious infections Postoperative fever	No clear evidence of differences between groups		cephalosporin vs penicillin (1 RCT, 220 women) penicillin plus antiprotozoal vs penicillin only (2 RCT, 155 women)	⊕⊝⊝⊝ very low1,2
Total adverse effects	No data reported on adverse effects
CI: confidence interval; RCT: randomised controlled trial GRADE Working Group grades of evidence High quality: Further research is very unlikely to change our confidence in the estimate of effect Moderate quality: Further research is likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate of effect and may change the estimate Low quality: Further research is very likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate of effect and is likely to change the estimate Very low quality: We are very uncertain about the estimate

^aDowngraded two levels for very serious imprecision with very few events and wide confidence intervals
 ^bDowngraded one level for serious risk of bias: methods were poorly reported in most studies