Fabrication of an Interlocked Antibiotic/Cement-Coated Carbon Fiber Nail for the Treatment of Long Bone Osteomyelitis.

Abstract

Successful management of intramedullary long bone osteomyelitis remains a challenge for both surgeons and patients. Patients are often immune compromised and have endured multiple surgeries. Treatment principles include antibiotic administration (systemically ± locally), surgical debridement of the infection site, and stabilization. Since their description in 2002, antibiotic-coated nails have become part of the armamentarium for the treatment of osteomyelitis allowing both local elution of antibiotics and stabilization of a debrided long bone. Limitations to their utilization have remained, in part from the technical difficulty of fabrication and magnetic resonance imaging artifacts. We describe a new surgical technique of fabrication that has the advantages of being simple, reproducible, with an end product free of magnetic resonance imaging artifacts.