ArticleEuropean journal of clinical microbiology & infectious diseases : official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology2026
DTT-based biofilm and conventional intraoperative cultures for the detection of prosthetic joint infections: a comparative study.
Article in European journal of clinical microbiology & infectious diseases : official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAccurate diagnosis of prosthetic joint infection (PJI) remains challenging. Biofilm culture by sonication has been included according to EBJIS criteria; however, this method is associated with technical difficulties. Dithiothreitol pretreatment (DTT-P) biofilm culture appears to be a promising alternative. The aim of this study was to compare the microbiological results from intraoperative tissue cultures (reference standard) with those obtained from DTT-P biofilm culture on explanted prosthesis, in order to explore the role of DTT-P in routine practice.
methodsWe conducted a retrospective, single-center, observational study including consecutive adult patients who underwent hip, knee, or shoulder prosthetic revision, between May 2023 and November 2024. For each explanted prosthesis, microbiological analysis was performed using both conventional intraoperative tissue cultures and DTT-P biofilm culture.
resultsAmong 192 revision procedures, the overall concordant results between the two methods were 93.8% (180/192). Thirty-four procedures (17.7%) were managed as PJIs. Of these, 19 (70.6%) were identified by both methods, 6 (17.6%) fulfilled the EBJIS criteria by DTT-P biofilm culture with negative conventional tissue cultures, and 6 were exclusively diagnosed by conventional culture. Three cases were defined as "Likely" infections. Slow-growing Gram-positive bacteria and polymicrobial infections represented a diagnostic challenge. The EBJIS histopathological criterion (≥ 5 PMNs in ≥ 5 HPFs) was met in only 2 out of 154 cases (1.3%), indicating a very limited contribution of histopathology in detecting PJIs in our cohort.
conclusionsOverall, these findings reflect the complexity of diagnosing PJI in clinical practice. Though DTT-P may provide complementary diagnostic information by identifying additional PJI cases, its results should be interpreted with caution. Larger prospective studies are needed to confirm these findings and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of this approach.
Indexed as
Identifiers
42545644What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.