Study Group Updates Infection Diagnostic Criteria

At the July 2018 meeting of the International Consensus Meeting (ICM) hosted by Jefferson Health in Philadelphia, a team of infection specialists put the finishing touches on an updated, validated and published diagnostic criteria for infections. The new updates come, of course, in the form of an app and very helpful decision tree.

And here’s the link to the new app that walks surgeons through a decision tree.

Javad Parvizi, M.D., co-host of the recent International Consensus Meeting held in Philadelphia and director of clinical research at the Rothman Institute at Jefferson, explained the update to OTW, “A monumental change is that the diagnostic criteria developed during the 2011 Musculoskeletal Infection Society (MSIS) workgroup have been updated, validated, and published in a peer reviewed journal.”

“The ICM document will be published as a book with over 20,000 English copies that will be distributed worldwide. The most significant thing about the new criteria is that they are evidence-based and validated.”

“In the past, they were purely consensus-based (i.e., based on expert opinion) and were never validated. Also, the new diagnostic criteria include the newer tests such as alpha defensin and D-dimer that have been evaluated and introduced in recent years.”

“We compared the new diagnostic criteria with the previous MSIS criteria and those from the 2013 International Consensus Meeting (ICM) and the new criteria won hands down. To get us to this stage, we worked with Tel Aviv University for 18 months to generate the diagnostic criteria—then we validated them with three institutions: Rothman Institute, Cleveland Clinic, and Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush. In addition, they have been validated in several other countries.”