Hey everyone,

Since we are almost done with senior research projects, I though it would be a good idea to share the importance and the benefits my research and other research projects similar to mine can have on people with TKA infections.

TKA infections, also generalized as periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) continue to affect patients, result in accelerated mortality, and consume approximately $1 billion of annual healthcare resources. A PJI can lead to a more surgeries, longer hospital stays, having to reside in nursing facilities, and more physical therapy. This can all become very costly for a person. While there is no known way to prevent PJI's from occurring, the next best thing is to diagnose an infection as soon as possible. An early diagnosis allows a surgeon to take action fast, and hopefully get rid of the infection before it grows into a more complicated one. Even if an infection is left untreated for a few weeks, the bacteria will adhere to the metal of the implant and form a biofilm. Once this biofilm has formed, the only good treatment option is the removal of the implant, insertion of antibiotic materials into the joint area, and then after many weeks, insert a new implant. This requires at least two additional surgeries from the primary replacement surgery imposing heavy financial and emotional tolls on the patient. Because diagnosing an infected knee replacement can be difficult, finding certain physical symptoms that are often accompanied by an infection or certain diseases that increase the chance of infection, may help physicians diagnose an infection earlier.

Komal

Hey everyone, I hope you all started your weeks off well. I have to admit, I do not have a whole lot to say about this week. I went through more patient charts and collected more information about each patients medical history and their hospital complications after surgery. I was planning on analyzing the data on Friday to share in blog post, but unfortunately, I was not feeling well that day and did not go to my internship.

But, I do want to talk about the direction my project is going. Initially, I mentioned in my proposal that my project would consist of aiding orthopedic researchers in developing an algorithm that would help doctors across the nation diagnose a TKA infection. My role has been collecting data, and inputing it into an excel sheet, so the researchers can use this information when developing an algorithm. I was under the impression this project would take a couple of months of collecting data, and then they would start working on an algorithm, but my on-site mentor informed me that they will be collecting data for a much longer period that a couple months. Since I do not know how to develop an algorithm myself, I will taking a different approach at analyzing this data myself. I will be using the data for two different reasons: first, I will use each patients medical history to see if certain diseases may increase a persons chance of developing an infection. For example, in last weeks blog post, I mentioned that based off the data I collected, patients with diabetes and/or hypertension were more likely to get an infection. Secondly, I will be using the hospital complications of each patient to see how often certain post-operative complications occurred in patients. Hopefully, there are certain complications happen more often and would be a greater indicator of infection. 

Thats all I have for today, but hopefully I will be able to share more trends later this week. See you on the next blog post!