Michael M. Kheir, MD

Published results showed patients with obesity who took anti-obesity medications and had postoperative weight loss within 1 year after total joint arthroplasty may be at significantly decreased risk for revision at 5 and 10 years.

Results from this prospective quality control study showed patients who received intrawound vancomycin powder had higher rates of periprosthetic joint infection and reoperations vs. patients who did not receive intrawound vancomycin powder.

Results published in the Journal of Arthroplasty showed patients with class II and class III obesity do not benefit or harm from preoperative weight loss prior to total knee arthroplasty.

Infection is a challenging and dreaded complication of any surgical procedure, particularly so in orthopedic surgery. Infection may be caused by a variety of organisms, and convention dictates isolation of a pathogen from a culture should not be considered representative of infection unless the organism is a “true” pathogen.