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Published on: October 16, 2014
Diagnosis of peri-prosthetic infection at the hip using triple-phase bone scintigraphy
1Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Sapporo Medical University, South 1 West 16 Chuo-Ku, Sapporo 060-8543, Japan. nagoya@sapmed.ac.jp
Abstract:
We evaluated triple-phase bone scintigraphy in the differential diagnosis of peri-prosthetic infection in 46 patients with a total hip replacement or bipolar hemiarthroplasty who were due for revision surgery. There were 18 men and 28 women, with a mean age at operation of 64.6 years (28 to 81). We defined peri-prosthetic infection as an increased uptake of radioisotope in all the phases of triple-phase bone scintigraphy and validated these results against the histological and/or microbiology results in every case. The positive and negative predictive values for the presence of infection were 83% and 93%, respectively. The diagnostic sensitivity was 88% and the specificity was 90%. This study indicates that triple-phase bone scintigraphy is a useful tool in the detection of peri-prosthetic infection and offers a cost-effective method of screening.
