PV versus ESR in diagnosis of prosthetic joint infection after TKR V1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Evaluation of Prosthetic Joint infection (PJI) After Total Knee Replacement (TKR): Is the Assessment of Plasma Viscosity (PV) as Reliable as the Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR)?
IRAS ID
224655
Contact name
Christopher Gardner
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
RD+E Hospital NHSFT
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
After knee replacement 1-2% of patients will get an infection in the new joint. It can be difficult to clarify if the joint is painful and infected, or just painful but not infected. Historically, we have used some simple blood tests in combination, (CRP and ESR) to help decide if infection is present or not. Whilst they are not 100% accurate, they are very helpful. Recently, our institution has proposed abolishing the use of ESR and using a different blood test- PV- instead. Previous research has looked at what happens to the PV after joint replacement in non-infected joints but there is no research identifying what happens to the PV in infected cases. \nWe have concerns that the ease with which we recognise an abnormality in the ESR, will not be the same for the PV. We need to establish what happens to the PV after knee replacement, particularly in infected cases, to give us a reference range by comparison to the ESR which will give us confidence in this different test.\nTherefore, we propose to undertake a study which will compare the results of the PV against the ESR and in combination with the CRP. We are trying to work out the values for the PV which will reliably indicate a greater chance of infection. We have a database of over 300 patients who have undergone re-do knee replacement in our hospital. Some will have been infected, and some not. They have had blood tests performed pre-operatively to see if the CRP, ESR and PV are elevated. The known infected cases will also have had the same tests after their surgery to check that the blood levels have improved. We will use these existing results to try and identify how well the PV correlates with the ESR and CRP.\n
REC name
South West - Central Bristol Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/SW/0077
Date of REC Opinion
12 Apr 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion