Dental Work After TKA — Strong Answer to the “Antibiotic Question”
And the answer, for most intents and purposes, is "no"
What’s the Claim?
A well-matched, nationwide, retrospective, comparative, large-database study found that among patients ≥ 1 year after primary or revision TKA:
- Having a dental procedure was not associated with an increase in PJI risk
- Using prophylactic antibiotics before dental procedures was not associated with a reduced PJI risk
Follow-up was extremely complete in this study of over a half million patients, nearly 200,000 of whom underwent dental manipulations and were followed for two years afterward.
This study offers as robust an answer as we’re going to get to the “antibiotic question,” and unless a patient is at particular risk for infection, that answer is no.
