Several studies have compared the incidence of periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) between simultaneous bilateral total joint arthroplasty (SBTJA) and staged bilateral total joint arthroplasty (StBTJA) patients following primary total joint arthroplasty. However, these studies lacked statistical power.
To determine by meta-analysis whether SBTJA increases deep infection risk compared to StBTJA.
All studies were retrieved from PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library databases, Web of Science, PEDro, CINAHL, SPORTDiscus, and Scopus. A meta-analysis was conducted to compare PJI rate between SBTJA and StBTJA patients.
Overall, there were 16 studies with 36,765 patients who underwent SBTJA and 71,558 patients who underwent StBTJA. The pooled data showed that the PJI rate of SBTJA was lower than that of StBTJA (0.84% vs 1.57%; odds ratio (OR): 0.57; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.49-0.66; heterogeneity, I
SBTJA does not increase the risk of subsequent PJI compared to StBTJA. Further studies are needed to provide higher quality evidence to evaluate the two modes of procedure.