Prevention of Suppurative Knee Arthritis after Knee Ligament Reconstructive Surgery

: Despite many reports describing the surgical procedure for knee ligament reconstruction, especially the anterior cruciate ligament, there have been few reports on infection prevention and none on sterilizing reconstruction materials using povi-done-iodine during surgery. Here we report our surgical techniques for infection prevention. The participants included 522 patients who underwent arthroscopic knee ligament reconstruction at our hospital from April 2001 to October 2005. Despite taking various measures after cases of infection in 2001, such as the selection of sutures and artificial ligaments, and the use of indwelling intra-articular drains, the infection rate was not reduced to zero. Recently, we felt that soaking reconstruction ligaments in povidone-iodine and then washing with saline （“ povidone-iodine pickling ”） immediately prior to burr-hole insertion may prevent bacterial infections caused by surgical instruments and the surgery. in study, we examined the effects of our techniques for intraoperative and postoperative infection prevention, including “ povidone-iodine pickling ” . 100 2001, 3 112 2002, 2 of 121 and 121 2004, when the povidone-iodine, graft on the floor during surgery in a chlorhexidine gluconate or povidone-iodine solution of the graft. of povidone-iodine for mitigate the risk of septic arthritis. Going forward, we need to understand the specific pathologic basis of any cytotoxicity caused by the use of povidone-iodine on reconstructed ligaments.