Radical surgical debridement is central to the eradication of prosthetic joint infection. Surgeons are taught that the adequacy of debridement is critical to the success of revision procedures. We aimed to assess the feasibility of using a handheld fluorescent imaging device as an adjunct to tissue debridement in the management of periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) after standard radical debridement.

Prospective feasibility trial.

This was performed at a tertiary prosthetic joint infection unit (The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, Birmingham, UK), multidisciplinary team (MDT).

10 patients with established PJI managed through a tertiary prosthetic joint infection MDT were recruited between January 2023 and December 2023. All patients underwent standard management, including radical debridement.

After completion of standard radical debridement, the device was used to identify any remaining areas of fluorescence. These areas underwent excision for further intraoperative microbiological and histological sampling to analyse if the represented areas had residual bacterial load.

To assess whether the fluorescence imaging device is able to detect additional areas of fluorescence which led to positive tissue sampling.

In all cases, the device was able to identify areas of fluorescence, indicating further debridement. In eight cases, an organism was isolated after additional microbiological sampling and culture. In all eight cases, the same isolate was identified with the standard sampling. Additional histological sampling was performed in eight cases and confirmed acute infection in three cases. The remaining five cases demonstrated histologically inflammatory tissue consistent with chronic infection.

This study is encouraging for the feasibility of using this device as an adjunct for debridement in the surgical management of PJIs; further evaluation is underway.