Catastrophic complication after total knee arthroplasty

Abstract

Infection is a significant complication in total knee arthroplasty (TKA) applications and has serious morbidity. Considering the difficulties in diagnosis and treatment of infections that develop after TKA, and the cost to patient health and national economies, preventing infection development would be a more rational approach. For this purpose, the patient’s risk factors should be determined and these risk factors should be optimized adequately and meticulously in the preoperative period. When an infection develops after TKA, the correct diagnosis should be made without delay and the most appropriate treatment method should be determined and applied to the patient. In determining the appropriate treatment approach; the patient’s age, the duration of symptom onset, concomitant diseases, bone quality, the status of the soft tissue cover and the type of microorganism should be taken into consideration. In this article, we present two cases, a 75-year-old woman and a 95-year-old woman, who underwent amputation due to infection after TKA. Transfemoral amputation was performed due to infection that developed after two-stage revision.