Aim
The objectives of the study were to investigate whether the biochemical and immunoinflammatory patient profile could facilitate postoperative monitoring, guide the antibiotic treatment and timing of revision surgery.
Background
Posttraumatic osteomyelitis (PO), occuring in 0.4 to 7% operations performed in orthopaedic and trauma surgery, is a major and serious complication. One of the most common injuries sustained after road traffic accidents is a tibial fracture. The force necessary to produce fracture also means considerable soft-tissue injury, with oedema, necrosis, hematoma and foreign bodies that potentiate bacterial virulence. Secundary injuries during surgical procedures with hematoma, tissue oedema and utilisation of implants for ostheosynthesis also contribute to the development of bone infection. Bone infection morbidity is principally the consequence of sustained primary contamination at presentation in open fracture and secondary contamination in closed fracture patients that underwent open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF). Early diagnosis of acute posttraumatic osteomyelitis (PO) is of vital importance for avoiding devastating complications. Diagnosing PO is difficult due to the lack of a highly specific and sensitive test, such as in myocardial infarct, stroke and intracranial bleeding. Serum inflammatory markers, C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin (PCT), white blood cells (WBC) can support clinical findings but they are not able to differentiate between inflammatory response to infection and the host response to non-infection insult with high specificity and sensitivity.
Methods and patients
This prospective nonrandomised cohort study included 86 patients after high-energy injury to the shin requiring primary surgical treatment ORIF addmited to Klinični oddelek za travmatologijo Univerzitetnega kliničnega centra v Ljubljani from January 2012 to December 2014. Values of the biochemical and immunoinflammatory profile were measured on admission (ADD), first-postoperative day (POD1) and fourth-postoperative day (POD4).
Results
20 patients developed PO of total of 86 patients included in the present study, 11 after open fracture (55%) and 9 after closed fracture (45%). The most frequent site of fracture was tibial shaft fracture followed by distal tibial Pilon fracture. In the PO group, distal tibia was predilection site of infection. Multiple sites fractured and polytraumatized patients were more likely to develop PO.
We discovered on our sample that the development of PO is associated with increased CRP on ADD, POD1 and decreased albumins on POD4. The assessment of other important risk factors such as: the extent of soft tissue damage, multiple fractures, transfusion rate, need for conversion primary external fixation to intramedullary (IM) nailing or locking plate fixation can empower our clinical judgment of PO.
Conclusions
We can improve prediction of posttraumatic osteomyelitis by using the perioperative inflammatory biomarker CRP in combination with postoperative albumins levels and other associated independent risk factors. Further studies are needed to prove that these differences can be useful in diagnosing the risk of infection.
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