Patient-Related Factors Affecting the Sensitivity of Sonication of Removed Hip and Knee Implants Against Conventional Tissue Cultures for Diagnosis of Prosthetic Joint Infections

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Anastasios Gketsos Antonios Kardatos Antonios Stylianakis Ioannis Giannaris Nikolaos Baxevanos Nikolaos Liarakos Panagiotis Lepetsos

Corresponding Author

Panagiotis Lepetsos
KAT Hospital, Nikis 2, 14561, Kifissia, Athens, Greece

A B S T R A C T

Despite its decreasing incidence, prosthesis-related infections remain a research, diagnostic, therapeutic and cost-related problem. Our study aim was to compare the diagnostic accuracy of conventional periprosthetic tissue culture and culture of sonication fluid of the explanted hardware and to investigate the role of patientrelated factors affecting the sensitivity of the sonication method. We investigated 70 patients undergoing revision hip or knee arthroplasty, at our institution. Patients’ medical history and demographic characteristics were recorded. We compared the culture of samples obtained by sonication of explanted hip and knee prostheses with conventional culture of periprosthetic tissue for the microbiological diagnosis of prosthetic-joint infection. Thirty-two patients had septic loosening and 38 aseptic loosening (48 hip prostheses and 22 knee prostheses). The sensitivities of sonication fluid culture and conventional tissue cultures were 81.25% and 56.25%, respectively (p-value = 0.043). The sensitivity of the sonication method was statistically higher in obese, diabetic patients, with age above 60, in uncemented arthroplasties and in arthroplasties because of primary osteoarthritis (p-values < 0.05). The sonication method has a greater sensitivity than the conventional periprosthetic tissue cultures for the periprosthetic infections, especially in obese, diabetic patients, with age above 60, in uncemented arthroplasties and in arthroplasties because of primary osteoarthritis.

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Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received: Thu 19, Dec 2019
Accepted: Sat 04, Jan 2020
Published: Wed 15, Jan 2020

Copyright

© 2023 Panagiotis Lepetsos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.CMR.2019.01.04