Most common surgical mistakes with treatment of prosthetic joint infections

Abstract

The treatment of infections of orthopedic implants is often difficult and complex, although the chances of successful treatment with properly selected diagnostics, surgical and antibiotic treatment protocol have recently increased significantly. Surgical treatment is a key stone factor in the treatment of infections of orthopedic implants and any errors in it often lead to worse clinical outcomes. The most important and frequent surgical errors include: conservative treatment of periprothetic infections with antibiotics only, to-late surgical revision, insufficient debridement during surgical revision, inadequate intraoperative samples for bacteriological and histological analysis. It is important to have and to follow proper treatment algorithm for periprosthetic joint infection. In this work we present the listed surgical and most illustrative key errors.

Keywords

• orthopedic implant infections, diagnostics, surgical errors, treatment algorithm, key errors.