Many people undergo surgery of the jaws each year to correct malformations. Whilst a risk of infection following surgery has been noted, no agreement has been reached regarding how useful antibiotics are for infection prevention and what type and dose of antibiotic should be used. We conducted a comprehensive search for studies on this topic. We collected data from all studies addressing this question and summarised them to determine whether antibiotics could prevent infection after surgery, whether this treatment has any adverse effects, whether it reduces the number of days that patients need to be in the hospital and whether it improves overall health status. We found 11 studies. Overall, long-term antibiotics reduce the risk of SSI, and there is uncertainty regarding the effects of receiving one dose of antibiotics preoperatively versus short term antibiotics. There was no investigation of side effects of antibiotics in these studies, but in the studies where side effects were investigated, no side effects were found. None of the other effects of interest to clinicians or patients were measured in the studies, and information was insufficient to show whether any single antibiotic is better than any other.