Arthroplasty as a treatment for acute and quiescent septic arthritis in native hips

The most feared complication in hip arthroplasty after septic arthritis is septic failure. It is considered that the two-stage treatment is the accepted treatment for acute septic hip arthritis. The objective in this work is to establish a therapeutic guideline for septic arthritis in native hips, proposing a two-stage treatment for acute, and a one-stage treatment for quiescent.

Observational, descriptive, retrospective study. We analyzed all patients who underwent total primary hip replacement between June 1997 and June 2016. We selected those patients who had a diagnosis of septic arthritis of the hip prior to surgery (group 1: acute septic arthritis; group 2: quiescent septic arthritis).

Eight hips in group 1 with a follow-up of one to six years. Each patient fulfilled the antibiotic treatment between the placement of the spacer and the definitive prosthetic replacement, and, in all the cases, the remission of the infection was verified. On the other hand, 12 hips in group 2, the time between the treated infection and the prosthetic replacement varied between five and 46 years. The femoral heads sent to culture were in all cases negative.

In the last 20 years, we have obtained satisfactory results, both in the treatment of acute septic arthritis and in its sequelae, interpreting them as pathologies of the same origin but with a different treatment. Both treatments are adequate, as long as the therapeutic protocol established for each of the groups is respected.