Among patients with osteoarthritis (OA), those who fail oral medications may benefit from an intra-articular injection. Data suggest that surgeons often refrain from these injections prior to hip replacement surgery for fear of increasing the risk of infection. This study employed a literature review and meta-analysis to further explore this question.

A literature review was completed of articles published between 1992 and 2013. Studies were chosen involving patients with OA of the hip who underwent total hip arthroplasty, comparing those who did with those who did not receive a steroid injection prior to the surgery.

A total of eight pertinent studies were identified, with a mean time e lapsed between the most recent steroid injection and surgery ranging from 3.7 months to 18 months. Of these, one was a prospective, observational, cohort design, while the remaining were retrospective cohort studies. the definition of infection was not descfibed in five studies. The rate of infection varied from 0% to 30%. In one study, infection occuffed in 30% of those in the iniection group and 7.5% in the non-injection group. Overall, the data were found to be insufficient to conclude whether intra-articular corticosteroid injections increased the risk of postsurgical infections.

This systematic litefature review failed to demonstrate that preoperative intra-rticular injections, prior to total hip arthroplasty, increase the risk of postoperative infection.