ORGANISMS RESPONSIBLE FOR TOTAL KNEE PROSTHETIC JOINT INFECTION: A SAUDITERTIARY CENTER 10-YEAR-EXPERIENCE

Background: Total Knee arthroplasty (TKA) is a standard procedure to treat end-stage knee osteoarthritis. As with any surgery, complications may arise, and one of the common complications reported from knee replacement procedures is infection. In this study, we aimed to retrospectively determine the prevalence of the infections pathogens following TKA and identify the most common microorganisms involved in infections in knee arthroplasty.

Methods: Data were gathered from archived medical files using a retrospective descriptive study methodology. The current study included patients who underwent total knee arthroplasty and experienced infections between 2007 and 2017 at King Abdul-Aziz Medical City (KAMC), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Results: Out of 56 patients, almost half were hypertensive (57.1%) and diabetic (46.4%). 51.8% of patients had bilateral TKA. Among the patients, a third (41.8%)had pain the primary organism identified was Staphylococcus (44.65%), and 20% of cases involved co-infection with another organism. 16% of patients had methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Infections with pseudomonas, brucellosis, and tuberculosis were also present in 17.9%, 3.6%, and 1.8% of the patients, respectively.

Conclusion: Staphylococci were identified as the primary organism responsible for prostheticknee infection in KAMC patients. We recommend a focus on staphylococci in both prophylactic and empirical antibiotic treatments. Additional multicenter studies examining larger sample sizes are required to identify other factors influencingProsthetic Joint Infection (PJI), including obtaining information on the patients antimicrobial sensitivity profiles and geographic factors.