Native septic arthritis is not an immediate surgical emergency

Acute native joint septic arthritis is generally considered a surgical emergency, requiring drainage within hours, including during night, weekend or holiday shifts. However, there are few data supporting the need for the disruption caused by this degree of urgency.

We performed a retrospective review of all adult patients seen in our medical center from 1997-2015 with culture-proven septic arthritis and noted the epidemiology of sequelae, and their possible association with a delay in surgical drainage.

Of 204 septic arthritis episodes, 46 (23%) involved interdigital hand and foot joints. Large joints involved included the knee (n = 67), shoulder (48), hip (22), ankle (8), acromio-clavicular (5), elbow (4), wrist (3), and sterno-clavicular (1) regions. All patients underwent surgical drainage of the joint and received targeted systemic antibiotic therapy. Sequelae of varying severity occurred in 83 patients (41%): recurrences (n = 15); secondary arthrosis (30); persistent pain (9); Girdlestone procedure (9); arthrodesis (9); amputation (8); stiffness (8); and Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome (2). By multivariate Cox regression analysis factors did not predict sequelae included: age; treatment with systemic corticosteroids; pre-existing clinical or radiological arthropathy; total duration of antibiotic therapy; type of joint; and, number of surgical interventions. Similarly, there was no association of sequelae with the number of days of pre-hospitalization joint symptoms (hazard ratio 1.0, 95% confidence interval 0.99-1.01) or hours spent in the emergency department (HR 1.0, 0.9-1.2). Notably, patients who had joint lavage within 6 h of presentation had similar functional outcomes as those with lavage done at 6-12 h, 12-24 h, or > 24 h after presentation.

Our data suggest that for native septic arthritis, in the absence of clinical sepsis immediate joint drainage does not appear to reduce the risk of sequelae compared with delayed drainage.