Consensus document for the diagnosis of prosthetic joint infections: a joint paper by the EANM, EBJIS, and ESR (with ESCMID endorsement)

BACKGROUND: For the diagnosis of prosthetic joint infection, real evidence-based guidelines to aid clinicians in choosing the most accurate diagnostic strategy are lacking. AIM AND METHODS: To address this need, we performed a multidisciplinary systematic review of relevant nuclear medicine, radiological, orthopaedic, infectious, and microbiological literature to define the diagnostic accuracy of each diagnostic technique and to address and provide evidence-based answers on uniform statements for each topic that was found to be important to develop a commonly agreed upon diagnostic flowchart. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The approach used to prepare this set of multidisciplinary guidelines was to define statements of interest and follow the procedure indicated by the Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine (OCEBM).