Consensus document for the diagnosis of prosthetic joint infections: a joint paper by the EANM, EBJIS, and ESR (with ESCMID endorsement)

BackgroundFor the diagnosis of prosthetic joint infection, real evidence-based guidelines to aid clinicians in choosing the most accurate diagnostic strategy are lacking.Aim and MethodsTo address this need, we performed a multidisciplinary systematic review of relevant nuclear medicine, radiological, orthopaedic, infectious, and microbiological literature to define the diagnostic accuracy of each diagnostic technique and to address and provide evidence-based answers on uniform statements for each topic that was found to be important to develop a commonly agreed upon diagnostic flowchart.Results and ConclusionThe approach used to prepare this set of multidisciplinary guidelines was to define statements of interest and follow the procedure indicated by the Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine (OCEBM).