Two-Stage Treatment of Periprostetic Infection: Mid-Term Results

Purpose — to evaluate the efficiency of two-stage revision arthroplasty performed according to a standardized protocol by a multidisciplinary surgical team. Materials and Methods. 87 patients with deep periprosthetic hip and knee joint infection (PJI) were included into the prospective study. The patients were admitted to the clinic in the period from January 2012 until December 2014 and underwent two-stage revision procedure. First stage included removal of infected implant and insertion of a cemented spacer, second stage — re-implantation of a prosthesis. Results. Re-implantation of a prosthesis was performed in 89.7% (95% CI 82.8–95.4) of cases. Infection recurrence rate was 13.8% (95% CI 6.9–20.7) and 12.8% (95% CI 6.4–21.8) after the first and the second stage, respectively. Overall efficiency of two-stage procedure was 80,5% (95% CI 71.3–88.5) with a median of 4.7 year follow up. Conclusion. Rate of re-implantation, recurrent infection and newly occurred infection should be taken into consideration for evaluation of treatment efficiency. Application of single criteria for assessment of successful treatment outcomes will allow to compare various studies. Positive microbiological tests during the second stage of procedure are not a risk factor for recurrent infection but can be caused by contamination of specimens