Avoiding Sepsis After Total Knee Arthroplasty: Be Gentle, Vigilant, and Proactive.

Abstract

Sepsis occurring after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is a disastrous complication [1,2]. I was fortunate in my career that, to my knowledge, after more than 6000 consecutive primary TKAs, none of my patients had experienced an early deep operative infection within a year following surgery. I did see late “metastatic” infection to primary TKAs at a rate of 0.6% on an average follow-up period of 10 years [3]. As I observe the orthopedic literature fill up with publications that search for methods to decrease the incidence of early operative infection after TKA [4-8], I am motivated to share my experience.