Browsing by Author "Venter, R. G."

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    Antibiogram profiles and efficacy of antibiotic regimens of bacterial isolates from chronic osteomyelitis of the appendicular skeleton: A developing-world perspective
    (Health & Medical Publishing Group, 2021-06-30) Ferreira, N.; Reddy, K.; Venter, R. G.; Centner, C. M.; Laubscher, M.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Chronic osteomyelitis is notoriously difficult to eradicate, and high treatment failure rates have been reported in the literature.[1,2] Although no evidence-based treatment guidelines exist for the management of chronic osteomyelitis, the ideal treatment strategy can be outlined as judicious resection of all necrotic tissue, dead-space management, and neovascularisation of the debridement site followed by soft-tissue and bony reconstruction as required.[3-7] Antibiotic therapy is empirically initiated as an adjunct to surgical management, and then continued as prolonged culture-specific (targeted) therapy.[3]In the absence of non-invasive sampling methods to ascertain the microbiological profile of osteomyelitis, the choice of empirical antibiotic therapy to initiate is often aimed at the most probable infecting organism, in conjunction with current international reports.[8] As the organism and antibiotic susceptibility profiles conceivably differ between geographical regions, empirical antibiotic strategies should ideally be based on local microbiological antibiograms. There are limited data available on the local pathogen profiles and antibiograms in developing countries, including South Africa (SA).
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    Antifragile orthopaedic surgeons : a reflection on the training experience
    (South African Orthopaedic Association, 2019) Venter, R. G.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: I’m a newly qualified orthopaedic surgeon. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. This essay is a reflection on the things I learnt doing it. I could say that I ‘burnt out’ during my surgical training. But that expression has been used to describe such a range of symptoms, from someone merely feeling depressed, to being the cause of a colleague’s suicide, that it has lost most of its meaning. In May 2019 the World Health Organization (WHO) clarified the term, and it has its own ICD-11 code now: ‘QD85’. It’s not a disorder as such, but one of the ‘factors influencing health status or contact with health services’, specifically related to one’s work environment.
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    Mycobacterium fortuitum as infectious agent in a septic total knee replacement : case study and literature review
    (Champagne Media, 2015) Venter, R. G.; Solomon, C.; Baartman, M.
    Infection of prosthetic joints with non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) is rare. The rapidly growing mycobacteria (RGM) are a subgroup of NTM. They are not very virulent organisms, found ubiquitously in the environment, and most infections in humans are due to direct inoculation of the organism into a joint or soft tissue. We describe a 70-year-old patient, who developed an infection with Mycobacterium fortuitum after primary knee arthroplasty, one of only a handful described in the literature. Peri-prosthetic infections with RGM are a challenge because there is a lack of data guiding management, and because the diagnosis is often delayed. Routine cultures of joint effusions or tissue are often discarded before the non-tuberculous mycobacteria have a chance to culture (in our case, 14 days). Principles of treatment include: making a diagnosis from tissue culture, staged revision surgery with aggressive surgical debridement of the joint and high dosages antibiotics (for at least six weeks, treating empirically initially until a sensitivity profile for the organism is available). The second stage of the revision should be delayed by 3-6 months. In our case the removed implant was autoclaved and re-implanted loosely with antibiotic-loaded cement as part of the first-stage revision.