Abstracts Posters SICOT-SOF meeting Gothenburg 2010 _2_

Poster
Topic: Infections
Abstract number: 23389
TOURNIQUETS IN TOTAL KNEE REPLACEMENT- ARE THEY A POTENTIAL
SOURCE OF INFECTION
Santosh VENKATACHALAM, Paul DIXON
City Hospitals Sunderland, Sunderland (UNITED KINGDOM)
This was a prospective audit carried out in 10 patients who were undergoing elective
total knee replacement. Infection following a knee replacement leads to poor results,
mulitple surgeries, and sometimes amputation. Extreme care is taken to avoid
infection in arthroplasty surgeries in the form of laminar flow theatres, proplylactic
antibiotics, good glycaemic control, double gloves, etc. Knee replacements are done
under tourniquet control. This study was designed to see if reusable tourniquets
could be a potential source of infection in TKR surgeries. The tourniquets were
numbered swabbed preoperatively in the operating theatre after application on the
patient. The results were checked to see if they had any significant growth of
organisms which could potentially cause infection in TKR. None of the tourniquets
grew organisms. This study highlights the fact regular maintainance of the tourniquet
with cleaning is important. An alternative option would be use of disposable
tourniquets.
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