The aim was to investigate the value of quantitative histological analysis in the diagnosis of fracture-related infection (FRI). The clinical features, microbiology culture results and histological analysis in 156 surgically treated non-unions were used to stratify the likelihood of associated infection. There were 64 confirmed infected non-unions (≥1 confirmatory criteria; pus, sinus and bacterial growth in ≥2 samples), 66 aseptic non-unions (no confirmatory criteria) and 26 possibly infected (pathogen identified from a single specimen and no confirmatory criteria). The histological inflammatory response was assessed by average neutrophil polymorphs (NPs) counts per high power field (HPF) and compared to the established diagnosis.Aim
Patients and Methods
