SILVER COATED PROSTHESIS IN ONCOLOGICAL LIMB SALVAGE SURGERY REDUCE THE INFECTION RATE

Silver coatings, used in many surgical devices, have demonstrated good antimicrobial activity and low toxicity. Oncological musculoskeletal surgery have a high risk of infection, so in the last decades, silver-coated mega-prostheses have been introduced and are becoming increasingly widespread. In this study, a retrospective analysis of 158 cases of bone tumors, primary or metastatic, treated between 2005- 2015 with wide margins resection and tumor implants reconstruction, was performed. The average age was 59 years (range 11-78 years), the same surgeon with antibiotic prophylaxis according to a standard protocol treated all patients. Silver-coated prostheses were implanted in 58.5% of patients and uncoated tumor prostheses in the remaining 41.5%. Patients were re-evaluated annually and complications were recorded, focusing analysis on infective complications. The average follow-up was 39.7 months: 23.4% of patients died at a median time of 35.3 months after surgery; 18.4% developed complications that required new surgery, of which 12.6% of these were due to infection. Patients treated with silver-coated implants developed early infection in 2.2% of cases against the 10.7% of the patients treated with standard tumor prosthesis. This difference between the two groups was statistically significant. The percentage of late infections occurring from 6 months after surgery was similar in both groups. Silver blood level taken in a sample of patients at different times after surgery, always showed values well below the threshold of toxicity and no patient showed any sign of local or general toxicity secondary to silver. Our study demonstrates that tumor silver-coated implants have a rate of early infection significantly lower than traditional implants, while there were no differences in the rate of late infections as described also in the literature. We recommend the use of silver–coated prosthesis as primary implants for limb salvage surgery in primary or metastatic bone tumors, considering the absence of toxicity and the lower rate of early infection.