SAS

This is draft version of SAS. The original article has not yet been peer-reviewed. Use with caution.

The Septic Arthritis Score (SAS) is a clinical decision-making aid aimed at answering the clinical question: ”Should this patient receive intravenous staphylococcus aureus-active antibiotics towards a presumed infected knee joint?

SAS applies to adult patients presenting at the emergency department with an acutely painful and swollen native knee where septic arthritis is considered a differential diagnosis and where vital signs have been collected, an arthrocentesis has been performed and synovial fluid has been inspected and sent for white cell count, glucose analysis and bacterial culture.

SAS is a clinical prediction model developed at the Infectious Diseases department at Helsingborg hospital, Sweden, with affiliation to Lund university. The use of the SAS could theoretically save a sizable number of unnecessary empirical antibiotics while still identifying patients with a final culture-proven septic arthritis. SAS has not yet been externally validated however and SAS is not meant to replace clinical judgement. We take no physician-patient responsibility. Further information will follow as soon as the original article has been published.

We hope that you will find SAS useful! // Best regards, Jonas Tverring and co-authors.