How a New Test Could Solve a Costly Problem

There's a costly problem affecting orthopedic patients and hospital systems, and a European molecular diagnostics company wants to be part of the solution.  Patients who have had a prosthetic joint replacement sometimes find themselves back in the hospital in excruciating pain that could either be caused by an invasive joint infection or a mechanical issue. The surgeon can puncture the joint to collect a fluid sample and have it sent to a lab for a culture test, but that takes up to two weeks to produce a result using the current standard of care technology, Curetis CEO Oliver Schacht told MD+DI.  "A lot of the bugs that cause these infections on a hip or knee implant form a biofilm that is very hard to diagnose at all," Schacht said. "A lot of these bugs don't grow very well." On top of being difficult to diagnose, the treatment is no cake walk either.  "They're extraordinarily hard to treat with antibiotics because they're forming this closed biofilm on your hip or knee implant and the antibiotics don't really get to that film of bugs," Schacht said. In absence of diagnostic information, the frequent treatment pathway is revision surgery in which the surgeon removes the implant, inserts a temporary spacer, has the implant cleaned, and later reimplants the prosthetic. This is often done as part of a two-step process that leaves the patient immobilized for several weeks while they wait to have their prosthetic reimplanted. "On the one hand that's of course extremely pa...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: IVD Orthopedics Source Type: news