Surgical wound infection is a serious and potentially catastrophic complication after joint arthroplasty. Urinary tract infection
is a common infection that creates a potential reservoir of resistant pathogens and increases patient morbidity. We asked
whether treated preoperative and postoperative urinary tract infections are risk factors for deep joint infection. We examined
the medical records of 19,735 patients. The minimum had joint infections develop. Of these, three had preoperative and four
had postoperative urinary tract infections. The majority of bacteria were not enteric. The bacteria in the two types of infections
were not identical. Control subjects were randomly selected from a list of patients matched with patients having infections.
Of these, eight had preoperative and one had postoperative urinary tract infections. We found no association between the preoperative
urinary tract infection (odds ratio, 0.341; 95% confidence interval, 0.086–1.357) or postoperative urinary tract infection
(odds ratio, 4.222; 95% confidence interval, 0.457–38.9) and wound infection. Only one of the 58 patients with wound infections
had a urinary tract infection with the same bacteria in both infections. Given the infection rate was very low (0.29%), the
power of the study was only 25%. Although limited, the data suggest patients with urinary tract infections had no more likelihood
of postoperative infection. We believe treated urinary tract infection should not be a reason to delay or postpone surgery.
Level of Evidence: Level III, therapeutic study. See the Guidelines for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.
Each author certifies that he or she has no commercial associations (eg, consultancies, stock ownership, equity interest,
patent/licensing arrangements, etc) that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article.
Each author certifies that his or her institution has approved the human protocol for this investigation and that all investigations
were conducted in conformity with ethical principles of research.