Dr Marwan Bukhari talks to Dr Susan Goodman, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, USA, about her paper on management of perioperative TNFα inhibitors in RA patients undergoing arthroplasty. Evidence from the literature suggests an increase in surgical site infections in patients either currently or recently using TNF inhibitors. They discuss the need for these findings to be confirmed by prospective studies in the context of other infection risks such as higher disease activity, corticosteroid use, smoking and diabetes.
