Diagnostics
From Measured Accuracy to Patient Outcome: Navigation in Total Hip Arthroplasty and Molecular Diagnosis of Periprosthetic Joint Infection: A Narrative Review
By Vladislav Andonov, Vensan Velchov, Yasen Nikolov and 5 others.
Abstract
Background
Total hip arthroplasty (THA) and the diagnosis of periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) have each acquired a technology that measures with high precision: intraoperative navigation, which reports component position to within a few degrees, and molecular methods, which identify the infecting organism and the host response at genomic resolution.
Objective
To establish whether the measured accuracy has been shown to reach the patient as a clinical outcome.
Methods
This is a narrative review, reported according to SANRA. MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science databases were searched from inception to 31 August 2026. English-language studies in humans were eligible if they reported positional or diagnostic accuracy, a patient-level clinical or economic outcome after THA or after treatment of PJI or osteomyelitis, or a factor modifying the relation between the two. Animal, in vitro, and cadaveric studies, conference abstracts, and reports without extractable data were excluded. Forty studies were included. No pooled estimate was calculated, and no new statistical analysis was performed.