Periprosthetic infection is the most challenging complication following total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Poor oral hygiene has been assumed as an important risk factor for TKA infection. We aimed to investigate whether the improvement of oral hygiene through dental scaling could reduce the risk of TKA infection. A nested case control study was conducted and enrollees in the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) aged above 40 years who had received total knee arthroplasty (TKA) between 1999–2002 were included as the TKA cohort. The cases were patients who underwent resection arthroplasty for infected TKA, and each case was matched by 4 controls from the TKA cohort by gender, using incidence density sampling method. The frequency of dental scaling before the index date was analyzed and compared between the case and the control groups. Multiple conditional logistic regression was used to assess the frequency of dental scaling and the risk of TKA infection.BACKGROUND
METHODS
