Abstract
Septic Arthritis is an important life threatening condition affecting all age groups with a mortality of up to 11%. Our aim was to perform a study of the demographics, length of stay, complications and investigate if time delay of surgical treatment from the time of diagnosis has an impact on mortality and morbidity of the patients.
Methods
We performed a retrospective study of all the patients presented to our Hospital between 2005 and 2009 with septic arthritis who underwent arthroscopic lavage as definitive intervention. We excluded the patients involving minor joints. Data collection was performed from case notes, microbiology and haematology laboratory results. We divided the patients into three groups based on the time from diagnosis to arthroscopic lavage as T1 (less than 12 hours), T2 (12–24 hours) and T3 (more than 24 hours).
Our primary outcome measures were mortality and complications such as Intensive Care Admission. Secondary outcome measures included average length of stay in each group.
Results
A total of 57 patients were evaluated. The average age of the patients was 49.7 (10 months–94 years). 2 patients of T1 group died (5.4%) 3 patients of T1 group needed Intensive Care Unit (ICU) management (8.1%). There were no deaths or ICU admissions in the other groups. 40.3% of patients needed arthroscopic lavage more than once. The average length of stay of T1 was 19.8 days, T2–11.5 days and T3–27.5 days. Majority of the joints involved were knees (63.1%).23 patients (40.3%) had a preceding intervention performed in the same joint. Staphyloccus aureus was the most common organism isolated in 14 patients (26.3%).
Conclusion
There was insufficient evidence to show a significant correlation between the time lag and mortality associated with septic arthritis. However, further large scale retrospective multicenter based studies would be beneficial in identifying the factors associated with complications of septic arthritis. Our study demonstrates high morbidity and mortality rates in T1 group which may be biased due to highly unstable patients in this group in comparision to the other two groups
