RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Effectiveness of Local Antibiotics in Treating Chronic Osteomyelitis in a Cohort of 50 Patients with an Average of 4 Years Follow-Up
Andraay H.C. Leung*, 1, 2, Benjamin R. Hawthorn1, A. Hamish R.W. Simpson1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2015Volume: 9
Issue: Suppl 1: M14
First Page: 372
Last Page: 378
Publisher ID: TOORTHJ-9-372
DOI: 10.2174/1874325001509010372
Article History:
Received Date: 21/02/2015Revision Received Date: 26/04/2015
Acceptance Date: 18/5/2015
Electronic publication date: 31/7/2015
Collection year: 2015
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
The treatment of chronic osteomyelitis requires both appropriate surgical and antibiotic management. Prolonged intravenous antibiotic therapy followed by oral therapy is widely utilised. Despite this, the long-term recurrence rate can be up to 30%.
A cohort of 50 patients from a 7-year period, 2003 to 2010, with chronic osteomyelitis was identified. This cohort was treated by surgical marginal resection in combination with local application of antibiotics (Collatamp G - gentamicin in a collagen fleece), a short course of systemic antibiotics post-operatively and conversion to oral antibiotics on discharge. Information was retrieved from case notes and computerized records. Outcomes from this cohort were compared with a historical cohort treated with marginal resection followed by 6 weeks of systemic antibiotics and 6 weeks of oral antibiotics.
The mean follow-up duration was 3.2 years (SD 1.8). The average length of admission was 9.8 days (SD 11.4). 6 patients (12%) suffered recurrence of infection requiring further treatment. We used the Cierny and Mader classification to stratify the patients. 'A' hosts had a shorter duration of admission (7.1 days) than 'B' hosts (12.3 days). There was no significant difference between recurrence rates of 'A' and 'B' hosts. Where available, we found pre-operative C-reactive protein (CRP) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) levels had no correlation with disease recurrence. Disease-free probability for this cohort compared favourably with the historical cohort.
We believe local administration of gentamicin in a collagen fleece is a useful component in the management of chronic osteomyelitis.
