Antimicrobial therapy in musculoskeletal surgery.

The treatment of musculoskeletal infections often involves a combined surgical and antibiotic approach. The antimicrobial therapy of these infections does not differ in basic principles from that of other infections. Because many different microorganisms can cause musculoskeletal infection, appropriate antimicrobial therapy depends on proper culturing, isolation, identification, and antibiotic susceptibility testing of the etiologic infectious agent. The need for long-term treatment makes the proper selection of antibiotic and monitoring of therapy imperative. The least toxic, least expensive, and most effective antibiotic should be selected.