Algorithm to diagnose delayed and late PJI: Role of joint aspiration

Abstract

Total Joint Arthroplasty (TJA) continues to gain acceptance as the standard of care for the treatment of severe degenerative joint disease, and is considered one of the most successful surgical interventions in the history of medicine. A devastating complication after TJA is infection. Periprosthetic joint infection (PJI), represents one of the major causes of failure and remains a significant challenge facing orthopaedics today. PJI usually requires additional surgery including revision of the implants, fusion or amputations causing tremendous patient suffering but also a heavy health economics burden. PJI is at the origin of around 20–25 % of total knee arthroplasty (Bozic et al. 2010; de Gorter et al. 2015; Sundberg et al. 2015) and 12–15 % of total hip arthroplasty (Bozic et al. 2009; Garellick et al. 2014; de Gorter et al. 2015) failures.