Unfortunately, the economic crisis in Lebanon precluded utilization of available funding to recruit patients at the specified institution. No patients were recruited.

This open-label randomized trial aims at assessing the role of Vitamin C pills in the prevention of catheter-associated urinary tract infections in women undergoing elective gynecological surgeries.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Non pregnant women at least 18 years of age visiting the Preadmission unit (PAU) or the OBGYN floor (7N), presenting for elective GYN surgery at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC).

Exclusion Criteria:

• Any women with the following:

  1. Nephrolithiasis
  2. Congenital anomaly or neurogenic bladder
  3. Allergy to ascorbic acid
  4. Who require therapeutic anticoagulant medicine during the 6 weeks after surgery
  5. Surgery did involve a fistula repair or a vaginal mesh removal
  6. Positive Urinalysis in the PAU
  7. Recurrent UTI's
  8. Diabetes
  9. G6PD
  10. Hemochromatosis
  11. Renal disorders

Patients already taking Vitamin C supplementation will also be excluded from the study.

Vitamin C and Placebo pills will be blindly labeled and assorted in opaque containers in the Pharmacy department according to a computer generated list that allocated random assignment of vitamin C or placebo to a 200 positions (serial numbers from 1 to 200).

The research assistant in charge of the recuitment will not be aware of the content of each opaque container and would be providing them to patients according to the order in which they are recruited starting with container number 1, then 2 and so on.

The primary care provider and the investigators are blinded as well as they are not aware of the assignment of each recruited patient to placebo vs interventional arm.

It is only upon completion of data collection that results would be compared with the randomized generated list in order to link the recruited patients and their collected data with their original assignment to placebo vs intervention.