Diagnosis and Management of Infected Total Knee Arthroplasty§

Infection following total knee arthroplasty can be difficult to diagnose and treat. Diagnosis is multifactorial and relies on the clinical picture, radiographs, bone scans, serologic tests, synovial fluid examination, intra-operative culture and histology. Newer techniques including ultrasonication and molecular diagnostic studies are playing an expanded role. Two-stage exchange arthroplasty with antibiotic cement and 4-6 weeks of intravenous antibiotic treatment remains the most successful intervention for infection eradication. There is no consensus on the optimum type of interval antibiotic cement spacer. There is a limited role for irrigation and debridement, direct one-stage exchange, chronic antibiotic suppression and salvage procedures like arthrodesis and amputation. We examine the literature on each of the diagnostic modalities and treatment options in brief and explain their current significance.

• Publication year

  2011

• Venue

  The Open Orthopaedics Journal

• Publication date

  2011-03-16

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.2174/1874325001105010086PMID 21584272PMCID 3092427
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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