Week 5: Brenda

This week I got my first set of data for the PJI project on tibial base plates. For this project we need to run some control samples for both 24 hour (immature biofilm) and 72 hour (mature biofilm) culture in order to understand the amount of bacteria (CFUs) on each base plate. Since we only got 5 available size D tibial base plates, we can only run 5 controls at a time. Something we noticed from these experiments is that E. coli has more CFUs at the 24 hour mark than the 72 hour mark, and it seems to match with literature. However, we are confirming these results by running the 24 and 72 hour controls again next week. These next weeks also begins our experimental protocols, which involves two different mechanical cleaning techniques and seeing their effectiveness in removing biofilm. 

At the clinic, I learned a lot about cement vs cementless total knee arthroplasties. It is very case-dependent, motivated by the surrounding bone where the implant is inserted. A soft-like surrounding bone (poor bone quality, not able to hold the implant in place) is actually more suitable for cement implantation and a higher bone quality is suitable for cementless because of osteointegration. This is easily detectable under X-ray (photo not mine, photo from Dr. Google). I actually got to see the implementation of the bone cement in the OR.