Decreased infection rates following total joint arthroplasty in a large county run teaching hospital: a single surgeon's experience and possible solution.

Total joint arthroplasty is a common orthopaedic procedure producing valuable improvements in patient's quality of life. A dreaded complication of this procedure is deep seated, periprosthetic infection. This complication can lead to multiple reoperations and upwards of $100,000 of increased cost burden. At one 900 bed county run teaching hospital, with a historically high infection rate in total joints, the total joint service was closed and restarted using a new protocol, dropping infection rates from 12.9% to 1.9% (P = 0.007).