Total joint arthroplasty continues to gain acceptance as the standard of care for the treatment of severe degenerative joint disease, and is considered one of the most successful surgical interventions in the history of medicine. However, infection of these implants, called Periprosthetic Joint Infection (PJI), remains one of the biggest challenges facing orthopaedics today. PJI can lead to additional surgeries, revision, fusion and amputation. It is important to accurately diagnose PJI because its management differs from that of other causes of arthroplasty failure. In acute infection, the local signs and symptoms (e.g., severe pain, swelling, erythema, and warmth at the infected joint) of inflammation are generally present. On the other hand, chronic infection usually has a more subtle presentation, with pain alone, and is often accompanied by loosening of the prosthesis at the bone-implant interface. The diagnosis of PJI has proven quite challenging, as both acute and chronic infections can be difficult to differentiate from other forms of inflammation. The reported literature on the diagnosis of PJI has focused on evaluated laboratory tests that were never developed specifically for the diagnosis of PJI. These include the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), the serum C-reactive protein (CRP), the synovial fluid white blood cell count and the leukocyte differential. Because these tests were not made for the purpose of diagnosing PJI, it has been the responsibility of the orthopaedic community to evaluate and recommend their interpretation. This has resulted in significant confusion regarding the appropriate thresholds and optimal combination of these tests. These difficulties were the motivation for the development of a specific test for the detection of PJI.INTRODUCTION
Diagnosis of PJI
Total joint arthroplasty continues to gain acceptance as the standard of care for the treatment of severe degenerative joint disease. However, the Periprosthetic Joint Infection (PJI) remains one of the biggest challenges facing orthopaedics today. It is important to accurately diagnose PJI because its management differs from that of other causes of arthroplasty failure. The most common symptom of PJI is pain. In acute infection, the local signs and symptoms (e.g., severe pain, swelling, erythema, and warmth at the infected joint) of inflammation are generally present. On the other hand, chronic infection usually has a more subtle presentation, with pain alone, and is often accompanied by loosening of the prosthesis at the bone-implant interface. The diagnosis of PJI has proven quite challenging, as both acute and chronic infections can be difficult to differentiate from other forms of inflammation. The reported literature on the diagnosis of PJI has focused on evaluated laboratory tests that were never developed specifically for the diagnosis of PJI. Because these tests were not made for the purpose of diagnosing PJI, it has been the responsibility of the orthopaedic community to evaluate and recommend their interpretation. This has resulted in significant confusion regarding the appropriate thresholds and optimal combination of these tests. These difficulties were the motivation for the development of a specific test for the detection of PJI. The promising diagnostic capabilities of synovial fluid biomarkers for PJI have already been reported in the literature. Studies have demonstrated that the alpha-defensin microbicidal peptide present in human neutrophils is an ideal biomarker for PJI due to the distinct separation it achieves between positive and negative results. A specific test allowing to measure the concentration of the alpha-defensin in the synovial fluid has been developed. The specificity and the sensitivity of this test for the detection of a PJI are respectively 96% and 97%. This test has been proven to have also a high reproducibility, its results not being influenced by antibiotics. A lateral flow version of this test (Synovasure PJI, distributed exclusively in Europe by Zimmer GmbH) has been recently developed. It allows reading the results in 10 minutes and it doesn't require any laboratories for its interpretation. Currently, this test device is in clinical evaluation in more than 200 European hospitals. In case that the clinical evaluation of this test device is positive, this method will be a new paradigm for the diagnosis of periprosthetic joint infection.
Based on numerous national registries, cemented hip replacements have globally better long-term results than uncemented hip replacements. For example, following data have been published in national registries: These registries demonstrated clearly that cemented fixation should be definitively preferred than uncemented fixation… Despite this evidence, uncemented fixation is more and more used in the majority of the countries performing total hip replacements. A recent paper analysed the Swedish situation and may give some reasons for explaining this paradox. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to analyze the Relative Risk (RR) of revision for different type of implants and/or fixation for 170,413 total hip arthroplasties. The RR was adjusted for sex, age, and underlying diagnosis. If the RR is lower than 1, less revisions are seen with uncemented fixation and less revisions are seen with cemented fixation when the RR is higher than 1. The figure 1 summarizes the table 6 of this publication. This figure naturally confirms that globally cemented fixation has a lower revision burden with an adjusted RR of 1.5 (revision of any component for aseptic loosening) than uncemented fixation. This difference in the revision is controlled by the cups, where the adjusted RR for uncemented cups is 1.8. Stems demonstrate an opposite behaviour with a lower revision burden for uncemented fixation with an adjusted RR of 0.4. Analysing the revision rate of the 5 most common implants (cemented versus uncemented), the adjusted RR for aseptic loosening is lower than 1 for both cups and stems. The difference of the RR between all cups (RR: 1.8) and the 5 most common cups (RR: 0.5) indicates undeniably that some cup have a major influence on the revision rate of uncemented systems. This analysis allows to draw following conclusions: In national registries, cemented fixation is globally superior. The lower clinical results of uncemented fixation seem to be controlled by badly designed uncemented implants. Modern uncemented implants have as least equivalent results than cemented implants. Based on these results, uncemented fixation will be the key fixation for this century.
