The Influence of Iodine-Impregnated Incision Drapes on the Bacterial Contamination of Scalpel Blades in Joint Arthroplasty.

BACKGROUND

Prosthetic joint infections (PJI) are a disastrous and feared complication in arthroplasty. Over the past decades, surgeons have tried to lower infection rates through all sorts of improvements. At present, it is impossible to reduce the risk to zero. As the contamination of surgical instruments and the surgical field has been identified as a remaining gap prone for infection, scalpel blades among others have become a focal point of several studies. This study is the first to compare the effect of adhesive incision drapes on contamination rates of scalpel blades in primary arthroplasty of the hip and knee.

METHODS

A total of 344 microbiologic blade culture results from 2 study groups with and without drape usage and 1 group with known PJI were analyzed and compared to histopathologic and microbiologic tissue results.

RESULTS

In 78% of all positive cultures, the bacteria were part of the local skin flora. The contamination rate for the skin blades with a drape was 3.81% vs 12.19% without drape usage. A significant difference was determined between positive skin blade culture results incision drape usage (P = .031). The different pathogens likely responsible for the PJI correlated with the deep blade cultures (P ≤ .01). The overall contamination rate of surgical blades (1.37%) is comparatively low to the results obtained from other surgical equipment in literature. None of those blade-positive patients developed a surgical site infection during 12-month follow-up.

CONCLUSION

Iodine-impregnated incision drapes are able to reduce surgical skin blade contamination. Further studies may be needed to assess the relationship between blade contamination and surgical site infections.