Is prosthesis retention effective for chronic infections in hip arthroplasties? A systematic literature review

The success rate of prosthesis removal as the standard approach to manage chronic infection in hip arthroplasties (HA) is 80–90 %. The effectiveness of prosthesis retention, with or without surgical debridement, to treat patients with chronic HA infection (symptom duration of more than 4 weeks) has not been well established, whereas this strategy is sometimes used in clinical practice. This study aimed to explore the cumulative incidence of failure of chronic HA infections treated with prosthesis retention, with or without debridement. A systematic literature review was conducted in accordance with the methods described in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Studies concerning patients with chronically infected HA treated with prosthesis retention were included. The primary outcome was the cumulative risk of failure. We searched the MEDLINE, Embase, and Cochrane databases up to April 2014. The database searches provided a total of 1,213 studies for potential inclusion in the review. Six relevant studies were finally identified, corresponding to 29 patients included. Their treatments consisted of prosthesis retention with debridement. This strategy failed for 14 out of these 29 patients after a 1-year follow-up. The failure rate of the prosthesis retention approach associated to debridement for chronic infection in HA is 48.3 % in this review. Debridement and prosthesis retention in association with prolonged antimicrobial treatment may be an advantageous alternative to arthroplasty exchange for frail patients. The difficulty in finding relevant studies illustrates the challenges of interpreting the existing literature for the management of chronic prosthetic joint infection (PJI).