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Methods and Variables Associated with the Risk of Septic Arthritis Following Intra‐Articular Injections in Horses: A Survey of Veterinarians
Author(s) -
Gillespie Caroline C.,
Adams Stephen B.,
Moore George E.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
veterinary surgery
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.652
H-Index - 79
eISSN - 1532-950X
pISSN - 0161-3499
DOI - 10.1111/vsu.12563
Subject(s) - medicine , septic arthritis , incidence (geometry) , logistic regression , medical record , arthritis , horse , surgery , paleontology , physics , optics , biology
Objective To determine common methods for intra‐articular injections and variables associated with the risk of septic arthritis following intra‐articular injection in the horse. Study Design Cross‐sectional survey. Sample Population Equine veterinarians. Methods A link to an online survey was distributed to equine practitioners in 2014. Responses for descriptive data were tabulated. Data on infection rates obtained from medical records were analyzed. Variables associated with the risk of septic arthritis were determined using χ 2 or Fisher's exact tests and logistic regression. Results Common current methods for intra‐articular injections were determined from 241 surveys. Sixty‐four of 241 surveys (26.6%) contained data with numbers of joints injected and number of infections obtained from review of medical records. Eight different injection methods were used by more than 2/3 of responding veterinarians. A total of 67 out of 319,760 injected joints reported became septic following injection, giving an incidence of 2.10 septic joints per 10,000 intra‐articular injections. Based on multivariate analysis, infection rates were significantly lower when veterinarians prepared their own injection sites (OR=0.10) and had <20 years of practice experience (OR=0.025), whereas infection rates were significantly higher when hair was removed at the injection site (OR=19.70). Conclusion There is a low incidence of septic arthritis following intra‐articular injection and a large number of injection methods reported by responding veterinarians. The low reported incidence of infection may be related to the large number of practitioners frequently using common methods.