The management of peri-prosthetic infection in total joint arthroplasty.

©2006 British Editorial Society of Bone and Joint Surgery doi:10.1302/0301-620X.88B2. 17058 $2.00 J Bone Joint Surg [Br] 2006;88-B:149-55. Deep peri-prosthetic infection following total joint arthroplasty is a major complication. Although it only occurs in a small percentage of patients it results in substantial morbidity and a decline in functional outcome. The risk of infection is generally quoted as being 1%. The lowest reported rate, 0.3%, was from the British Medical Research Council 1 but, no subsequent studies have validated this figure. A rate of 2.2% was described in a review of 236 140 American patients who underwent total hip arthroplasty (THA) between 1986 and 1989. 2 The Scandinavian Arthroplasty registers have demonstrated that between 7% and 16% of THA revisions are carried out for infection. 3,4