Use in routine arthroscopy

The estimated risk of surgical site infection following elective arthroscopy is low. A study by Weese and Cruz [1] had no iatrogenic synovial sepsis in a case series of 97 horses that received perioperative antibiotics; however, Olds et al. [2] reported an overall a rate of 0.9% (8/932 joints explored). In this study the authors reported no evidence of a difference in rate between horses that received antimicrobial prophylaxis and those that did not. Similarly, a case series by Borg and Carmalt of 444 surgical cases that did not receive antibiotic therapy indicated a synovial sepsis rate of 0.5% (3/636 joints explored) [3]. This compares very favourably with the estimated prevalence of septic arthritis in the human population of approximately 1% ...