Evaluation of routine infection screening results before elective primary total knee and hip artroplasty

The aim of this retrospective study is to investigate whether urine and nose cultures and urinalysis screenings routinely performed in preoperative evaluation before unicondylar knee, total knee, total hip arthroplasty surgeries have an effect on detecting and preventing periprosthetic infection. A total of 650 patients who met the appropriate criteria that had undergone elective unicondylar knee arthroplasty, total knee arthroplasty or total hip arthroplasty surgery due to the diagnosis of knee or hip joint osteoarthritis between 01.01.2015 and 01.01.2021 at Pamukkale University Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology after receiving the approval of the local ethics committee, were included in the study. Preoperative urinalysis, urine and nasal cultural results of the patients were recorded through the hospital software system. Patients were interviewed and patient-related risk factors in the development of periprosthetic infection and demographic data were collected. SPSS 28.0 software was used to analyse of the data. p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant in all analyses. Out of the 650 patients included in the study, 136 (20.9% of all patients) of the patients were male and 514 (79.1% of all patients) were female. Periprosthetic infection was determined in 9 patients. Pathogenic bacterial agents causing periprosthetic infection were detected as growing agents in cultures taken in double-stage revision surgeries. In conclusion, male sex was found to be a statistically significant risk factor for the development of periprosthetic infection. There was no significant relationship between urine culture taken in the preoperative period, bacteria isolated in the nasal culture, leukocyte and nitrite values in urinalysis; and the development of periprosthetic infection. It is shown that these examinations in preoperative screening has no effect on detecting and preventing periprosthetic infection.