2. Review of the current literature
2.1. Incidence
Overall, septic arthritis is reported after less than 1% of
arthroscopy procedures. The true incidence of deep postarthroscopy
infections is somewhat unclear, however, as it has
increased 3-fold between the early case-series (0.04%–0.86%) [1]
and more recent publications (0.14%–2.25%) [2–5]. This increase
reflects the growing use of arthroscopy and expansion of interventional
arthroscopy (with the introduction of implants and
transplants). Furthermore, given the diagnostic challenges raised
by post-arthroscopy infections, some cases may be missed and the
true incidence therefore underestimated