Introduction: Infection following arthroplasty is a rare but significant and threatening complication. The incidence is about 2%. Treatment of an infected joint replacement may be demanding, time consuming and expensive. The aim was to evaluate the average cost of an infected arthroplastic in our own department under the given reimbursement system in Germany.

Material and Methods: During 3 month 20 consecutive cases of infected joint refered to our institution were monitored for treatment costs and final reimbursement by the health insurances.

Results: In 65% of the included cases the amount of reimbursement by the health insurance organisations did not cover the costs of the treatment in our department. The amount of financial loss in total was 48.142 € with more than 9.000 € in some cases.

Conclusions: For the treating institution there is a risk of substantial financial losses due to inadequate reimbursement. Calculated on the basis of ~ 150.000 implanted joint protheses / a, an infection rate of 2% and treatment costs of ~50.000 € / infected case the economic burden is an estimated 150 million € / a in Germany. This amount should justifie a sound evaluation of costs related to infection in arthroplasty, which should be the effort of the health insurance organisations. Additionally specific research in the field of infection prevention must be sponsored. The system of reimbursement should be adeaquately adopted and corrected.