Radionuclide Bone Scintigraphy in the Detection of Significant Complications after Total Knee Joint Replacement

Infection in Primary Hip and Knee Arthroplasty

“…The bone scan can also remain positive for a year following primary arthroplasty. Bone scan does have a high negative predictive value therefore bone scans potentially can be used to exclude infection in the setting of a painful prosthetic joint (Smith, et al 2001). Similar findings have been documented with newer modalities such as 18 F-Fluoro-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) (Delank, et al 2006, Zoccali, et al 2009).…”

Septic Loosening of a Total Hip Replacement: Case Report

“…Swab cultures have a low sensitivity and should be avoided (1). It should be noted that cultures may be negative because of prior antimicrobial exposure, prolonged transport time to the microbiology laboratory, low number of organisms or fastidious organisms (19,20). To detect cases of lowgrade infection, antimicrobial therapy must be stopped two weeks before tissue specimen are obtained (18).…”

“…Serial plain radiographs may show subperiosteal bone growth and trascortical sinus tract suggestive infection (2). Scintigraphy with technitium-99m has high sensitivity but low specificity where as indium-Ill -labled autologous leucocytes is time consuming and hence, both are not routinely used (20,21).…”

New Antibiotics in the Therapy of Osteomyelitis

“…Studying its quantitative signal during long lasting therapy in humans might become interesting, since it could help identifying patients for which a prolongation of therapy would not be necessary or it could detect zones of early collection for which a surgical re-intervention might become warranted. Scintigraphy has become less important harboring a low specificity for implantassociated infections [35] . Moreover, bone scintigraphy alone cannot distinguish between aseptic loosening and infection, and needs combination with a leukocyte-scintigraphy.…”