Fatigue characterisation of the preformed knee spacer

Infection is one of the most severe complications that can arise after the implant of a knee prosthesis [2, 7]. Late infections are usually treated by removing the infected prosthesis and reimplanting a new one, following either the one or two stages technique: in order to avoid persistent and recurrent infections that have been reported when using the one-stage technique [8, 10] the two-stage technique has been introduced, consisting in the removal of the infected prosthesis in a first operation stage and in the reimplantation of a new one after adequate treatment of the infection in a second stage, usually performed six to twelve weeks after the first procedure [7, 10, 12, 14].