Total hip arthroplasty in the treatment of adult hips with current or quiescent sepsis.

Total hip arthroplasty was done in a series of fifty-seven hips with current or prior infection. Active pyrogenic infection existed in eighteen hips at the time of arthroplasty, in five there was probable pyogenic sepsis, and in twenty-seven there was no current pyogenic infection but there was good evidence of prior pyogenic infection. Seven hips had previously been infected with tuberculosis. All but three of the eighteen patients with active infection had a revision of a previous infected arthroplasty. One had had a resection arthroplasty (Girdle-stone) followed six months later by a total hip arthroplasty. The mean length of follow-up was forty-two months. Fourteen of the eighteen reconstructions were successful. The four that were unsuccessful had recurrent infection and included the only two patients with gram-negative organisms. There was no evidence of recurrence of infection in the other three groups (thirty-nine hips).