Diagnosis of Early Postoperative TKA Infection Using Synovial Fluid Analysis

Description: Questions/purposes We evaluated the diagnostic performance of four common laboratory tests, the synovial white blood cell count, differential, C-reactive protein, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate to detect infection in the first 6 weeks after primary TKA.
Conclusions With a cutoff of 27,800 cells/μL, synovial white blood cell count predicted infection within 6 weeks after primary TKA with a positive predicted value of 94% and a negative predictive value of 98%. The use of standard cutoff values for this parameter (~ 3000 cells/μL) would have led to unnecessary reoperations.
The Mark Coventry Award: Diagnosis of Early Postoperative TKA Infection Using Synovial Fluid Analysis
Hany Bedair, Nicholas Ting, Christina Jacovides, Arjun Saxena, Mario Moric, Javad Parvizi & Craig J. Della Valle CORR 2010 Volume 469, Number 1, 34-40