Effectiveness of antibiotic-coated intramedullary nails for open tibia fracture infection prevention. A systematic review and meta-analysis

Open Tibia fractures are associated with high rates of Fracture Related Infection (FRI). Given the negative outcomes and increased costs related to the latter, several prophylactic local antibiotic delivery methods have been proposed, aiming to decrease the FRI rate. Our objective with this study was to determine the effectiveness of antibiotic-coated intramedullary nails for open tibia FRI prevention.

We conducted a PRISMA compliant systematic review and meta-analysis. Queries were performed on Embase, PubMed, Lilacs and Cochrane data libraries. Seventeen studies were included for qualitative analysis and 2 studies were amenable for meta-analysis.

Global infection, deep infection and non-union rates were 8.4%, 5.4% and 3.7% in the antibiotic-coated nail group and 22%, 14% and 14% in the non-antibiotic-coated nail group respectively. The meta-analysis showed a protective trend that favored the antibiotic-coated nail group although it didn't achieve statistical significance: deep infection Relative Risk (RR) (RR = 0.17 CI95% [0.02 - 1.31]); global infection RR = 0.36 CI95% [0.10 - 1.35]) and non-union (RR = 0.14 CI95% [0.02 - 1.22]), CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest a favorable trend towards antibiotic-coated nail, with decreased risk of global infection, deep infection and non-union as compared to non-antibiotic-coated nail in patients with open tibia fractures. Nonetheless, higher level evidence studies are required to confirm our findings.