Prevention and treatment of peri-prosthetic joint infection using surgical wound irrigation

Over the past decade, the incidence of revision arthroplasty due to infection has increased substantially, often resulting in multiple surgical interventions with variable success rates and poor clinical outcome. Intraoperative wound irrigation has been proposed to reduce bacterial bioburden and contamination, but currently there is no widely accepted recommendation for the use of topical antiseptics, whether as separate molecules or as a mixed solution. We reviewed studies regarding the use of intraoperative topical antiseptics, their security profile and efficacy in preventing and treating infections of orthopedic implants and introduced a possible combination that may prove valuable in the future.