External Validation of a Predictive Score for Fracture-Related Infections in Orthopedic Trauma Surgery

Area of Science:

• Orthopedic Surgery
• Infectious Disease Epidemiology

Background:

• Fracture-related infections pose a significant risk in orthopedic surgery.
• Predictive models can aid in assessing patient risk for these infections.

Purpose of the Study:

• To externally validate a predictive score for fracture-related infections.
• To establish the generalizability of the score for predicting absolute and relative infection risk.
• To support preoperative patient counseling and surgical decision-making.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective, case-control study at a level I academic trauma center.
• Included 147 patients with fracture-related infection and 300 controls.
• Analyzed 8 independent predictors and used AUC to compare derivation and validation cohorts.

Main Results:

• Achieved an Area Under the Curve (AUC) of 0.74, nearly identical to the derivation cohort.
• Relative risk of infection correlated with the Wise score similarly to the initial model.
• Absolute risks were also found to be similar between cohorts.

Conclusions:

• The predictive model for fracture-related infections was successfully externally validated.
• The model is generalizable to different patient populations.
• The scoring model provides a quantitative measure of risk for preoperative patient counseling and surgical planning.