Septic Arthritis

Septic arthritis is an infectious arthritis provoked by bacteria or a virus that somehow managed to get into the articulation by blood from an infectious nucleus situated somewhere in the body or by accident, with the help of an open wound, or even because of an inflammation. They are almost always mono – arthritis, that only affect one articulation. Swelled, warn and sometimes reddish, the affected articulation becomes very quickly painful, and the pain escalades so much that it makes moving impossible. The patient must present a fever, even if it’s not too high at first. When a septic arthritis is suspected in a patient, he must be insolated as soon as possible and the infection reason must be detected at once. This identification has to be done through blood tests if the infection factor could’ve traveled by blood, or by a small sting at articulation level to study the liquid that is used to moist articulations in normal circumstances.

After the cause of the infection has been determined, we must immediately start treating it. Because the frequency of infections is more frequent in persons with decreased immune functions, babies and old people are the ones that usually develop septic arthritis. Also, children tend to injure themselves very often in certain articulations (the knees) therefore allow external bacteria or other infections enter the body and inflame the articulation.

As in any infection, at articulation level a purulent liquid will develop the one that causes most of the swelling and pain. This fluid, if present in large palpable quantities must be drained out immediately, before starting the antibiotic treatment, reducing this way the risk of infected other internal organs by blood way.

Although the septic arthritis is a type of arthritris that can no be prevented though diet or medication, there are certain situations that make its appearance more probable. Amongst them we can count children that injure themselves a lot in the knee area, especially during summer time and expose the open wounds to all the bacterial factors contained by open air, old people that are more likely to have accidents and wounds that might heal slower, babies and persons with weak immune systems that suffer from repetitive infections of different parts of their bodies, persons that have rheumatoid arthritis and are taking immunosuppressive drugs because they are more exposed to external infections in general. If more than one of the above situations can be found in a person, then the probably of developing septic arthritis is exponentially enhanced.