24
February
2022
|
21:50 PM
America/New_York

Chronic antibiotic suppression may successfully treat periprosthetic joint infections

Orthopedics Today reports on a study published in the Journal of Arthroplasty finding chronic antibiotic suppression may be a reasonable strategy in patients with periprosthetic joint infections, and HSS hip and knee surgeon Geoffrey H. Westrich, MD, who was not involved in the study, provides external perspective.

Dr. Westrich explained, “The study by Rebecca G. Burr, MD, and colleagues represents a small number of patients. They had 45 patients with 31 TKAs and 14 THAs. When they looked at reoperation, they found THA patients do better than TKA patients, which we have found in our previous research as well.”

He continued, “There haven’t been good, prospective randomized studies on the duration of antibiotic suppression following infected hip and knee replacements. As such, it is unclear if we should use suppressive antibiotics for 6 weeks, 3 months, 1 year or longer. In the future, we hope that randomized, prospective studies will answer these questions. The downside of such studies, however, is that randomizing a patient to stopping antibiotic suppression after 6 months may potentially put the patient at risk for recurrence of the joint infection and may result in the patient needing further surgery if the infection recurs.”

Read the full article at Healio.com/orthopedics.