NEW ORLEANS — A strip test indicating the amount of leukocyte esterase enzyme in knee joint synovial fluid following total knee arthroplasty may be a highly sensitive and specific indicator of infected joints, according to the results of a prospective study presented here.
Neutrophils in an infected knee joint secrete the leukocyte esterase enzyme and that the prevalence of this enzyme may be a marker for infection.
Jacovides presented the study at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
“We believe the leukocyte esterase strip test is a highly accurate test for diagnosis of infection,” Jacovides said. “It is a fast test. It takes 1 to 2 minutes, after which the results are immediately available.”
They aspirated 1 cc to 2 cc of synovial fluid from 117 TKA cases undergoing revision surgery and applied the fluid to a strip that detected the presence of the leukocyte esterase enzyme. They sent the remainder of the aspirate to be checked for typical counts of leukocyte cells and cultured to determine whether the lab results correlated with the findings of the strip test.
If both tests were positive (++) or if one test was positive (+), the results with the new test were considered positive. All other results were deemed negative, Jacovides said.
Reference:
Parvizi J, Jacovides CL, Azzam KA, et al. Diagnosis of periprosthetic joint infection: the role of a simple, yet unrecognized, enzyme. Paper #156. Presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. March 9-13, 2010. New Orleans.
No comments:
Post a Comment