Along with the sharply rising number of total hip and knee arthroplasties performed in the US comes an increasingly compelling need to prevent periprosthetic joint infections (PJIs). If a PJI occurs, guidelines recommend a two- to six-week post-revision course of pathogen-specific intravenous antibiotic therapy. However, the benefit of chronic suppression with oral antibiotics beyond that is unproven.
In the August 5 edition of The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, Siqueira et al. compared the infection-free prosthetic survivorship in 92 patients who underwent chronic oral antibiotic suppression for a minimum of six months with prosthetic survivorship in a matched cohort who did not receive extended antibiotic treatment.
