Current surgical practice for septic arthritis of the knee in the United States.

Jaffe, David; Costales, Timothy; Jauregui, Julio J; Koenig, Scott; Weir, Tristan B; Greenwell, Patrick; Christian, Matthew; Henn, R Frank · J Orthop · 2021

cross_sectional · Level IV

Where this comes from

Abstract

For septic arthritis of the knee, we attempted to determine: the preferred surgical technique in the United-States (US), the believed "gold-standard" treatment among others. This was performed by an electronic-survey distributed to all academic orthopaedic faculty throughout the US. The preferred method was arthroscopy (69.8%). Arthroscopy is believed to be the gold-standard in 27.0%, arthrotomy in 29.4%, while 43.5% believe no gold-standard exists. In conclusion the majority of surgeons prefer arthroscopy when managing a native, septic knee in an adult patient. However, there is no national consensus on a gold-standard treatment or the role of synovectomy.

Anatomy