Methods and Variables Associated with the Risk of Septic Arthritis Following Intra‐Articular Injections in Horses: A Survey of Veterinarians

OBJECTIVE: To determine common methods for intra-articular injections and variables associated with the risk of septic arthritis following intra-articular injection in the horse. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey. SAMPLE POPULATION: Equine veterinarians. METHODS: or Fisher's exact tests and logistic regression. RESULTS: Common current methods for intra-articular injections were determined from 241 surveys. Sixty-four of 241 surveys (26.6%) contained data with numbers of joints injected and number of infections obtained from review of medical records. Eight different injection methods were used by more than 2/3 of responding veterinarians. A total of 67 out of 319,760 injected joints reported became septic following injection, giving an incidence of 2.10 septic joints per 10,000 intra-articular injections. Based on multivariate analysis, infection rates were significantly lower when veterinarians prepared their own injection sites (OR=0.10) and had <20 years of practice experience (OR=0.025), whereas infection rates were significantly higher when hair was removed at the injection site (OR=19.70). CONCLUSION: There is a low incidence of septic arthritis following intra-articular injection and a large number of injection methods reported by responding veterinarians. The low reported incidence of infection may be related to the large number of practitioners frequently using common methods.