Copyright
©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Nov 18, 2018; 9(11): 262-270
Published online Nov 18, 2018. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v9.i11.262
Published online Nov 18, 2018. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v9.i11.262
Should antibiotics be administered before arthroscopic knee surgery? A systematic review of the literature
John Carney, Nathanael Heckmann, Erik N Mayer, Ram K Alluri, Carleton Thomas Vangsness Jr., George F Hatch III, Alexander E Weber, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, United States
Author contributions: All authors equally contributed to this paper with conception and design of the study, literature review and analysis, drafting and critical revision and editing, and final approval of the final version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest. No financial support.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The guidelines of the PRISMA 2009 Statement have been adopted.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Alexander E Weber, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Southern California, 1520 San Pablo Street, Suite 2000, Los Angeles, CA 90033, United States. weberae@usc.edu
Telephone: +1-818-9497381
Received: July 2, 2018
Peer-review started: July 2, 2018
First decision: July 18, 2018
Revised: September 9, 2018
Accepted: October 23, 2018
Article in press: October 23, 2018
Published online: November 18, 2018
Peer-review started: July 2, 2018
First decision: July 18, 2018
Revised: September 9, 2018
Accepted: October 23, 2018
Article in press: October 23, 2018
Published online: November 18, 2018
Core Tip
Core tip: Our study is the first to demonstrate prophylactic antibiotics are effective in preventing septic arthritis following simple arthroscopic procedures of the knee, though given the large number needed to treat, the clinical significance of this finding is unclear. There is little to no debate that antibiotics should be used prophylactically for arthroscopic surgeries involving graft implantation. However, our findings indicate that the addition of graft soaking further reduces the rate of infection. Further study is warranted to identify patient populations and arthroscopic procedures in which the use of prophylactic antibiotics may not be necessary.