Septic arthritis of the fingers: is short-term oral antibiotic therapy appropriate?

The management of septic arthritis of the hand is poorly described and there is no consensus. It is based on how septic arthritis of the large joints is managed, despite certain specificities related to the hand, typically involving inpatient management and intravenous antibiotic therapy. The primary objective of this work was to evaluate our postoperative protocol for the management of septic arthritis of the hand with short-term antibiotic therapy. The secondary objective was to determine the risk factors for treatment failure. We conducted a retrospective, descriptive, single-center study and analyzed the medical records of patients managed for septic arthritis of the fingers over a 1-year period from January 2018 to December 2018. We collected patient demographics and all pre-, intra-, and postoperative data. A total of 128 patients were included. The median age was 52.4 years (41-66). An exogenous source of contamination was reported in 98% of cases (animal bite, plant thorn, wound, cyst trituration, etc.). The most frequently isolated microorganism was Staphylococcus aureus (45%), followed by Streptococcus spp. (22%) and Pasteurella spp. (18%). The vast majority of patients (79%) were treated with oral amoxicillin/clavulanic acid. This treatment was continued in 91% of patients after microbiological results were obtained for a median treatment duration of 8 days (7-15). Nine percent of patients failed treatment. The risk factors identified were crush wounds (p = 0.04), initial radiological abnormalities (chondrolysis and/or osteolysis) (p = 0.016) and infection with Pasteurella spp. (p = 0.015). Our study suggests that simplified antibiotic therapy is feasible for the management of septic arthritis of the hand with short duration, broad spectrum oral antibiotics in the absence of identified risk factors.