The success of two-stage exchange arthroplasty for the treatment of chronic periprosthetic joint infection has been reported to approach or to exceed 80% in the majority of studies16-22. However, there is a widespread heterogeneity on the reporting of the clinical outcomes of two-stage exchange arthroplasty. The most important fact is that the definition of success has varied in these reports. The lack of consensus with regard to what constitutes a successful treatment outcome for periprosthetic joint infection makes it difficult to compare the outcomes between studies and ultimately between different treatment strategies. This has led to the development of a multidisciplinary consensus to better define success14. However, despite the availability of an acceptable definition for success, it is not known whether success should take into account patients who had a failure after the first-stage surgical procedure and never underwent reimplantation for a variety of reasons.
The majority of studies showing the outcome of two-stage exchange arthroplasty do not take into account the attrition that occurs between the two stages and arguably overestimate the success of this surgical procedure. Although there are a variety of reasons for the attrition between stages, one sobering recognition is that the proportion of patients who die after the initial resection arthroplasty is not small1,23.