Microbial findings and the role of difficult-to-treat pathogens in patients with periprosthetic infection admitted to the intensive care unit

Little is known about patients with Periprosthetic Joint Infection (PJI) admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The purpose of this study was threefold: i) To report the microbiological findings of ICUpatients with PJI. ii) To compare the clinical data between Difficult-To-Treat (DTT) and non-DTT PJI. iii) To identify risk factors for mortality. This is a retrospective study from a tertiary healthcare center in Germany from 2012-2016. A total of 124 patients with 169 pathogens were included. The most common bacteria were Staphyloccous aureus (26.6%), Staphyloccus epidermidis (12.4%), Enterococci ssp. and Escherichia coli (respectively 9.4%). DTT PJI was diagnosed in 28 patients (22.6%). The main pathogens of DTT PJI were Staphylococus epidermidis (14.5%), Escherichia coli (12.7%), Staphylococcus aureus and Candida spp. (respectively 9.1%). Polymicrobial PJI, number of pathogens, ICU stay and mortality were significantly differrent between DTT PJI and non-DTT PJI (p≤0.05). Multivariate logistic regression identified prolonged ICU stay and DTT PJI as risk factors for mortality. In conclusion, we suggest, that the term of DTT pathogens is useful for the intensivist to assess the clinical outcome in ICU-patients with PJI.