مؤسسة الشرق الأوسط للنشر العلمي
عادةً ما يتم الرد في غضون خمس دقائق
Background. Septic arthritis destroys articular cartilage and subchondral bone within days unless treatment begins promptly. The condition is well characterised in European and North American case series, but no North African dataset has combined clinical scoring, imaging, histopathology, culture, susceptibility testing and regenerative therapy in a single cohort. Methods. We retrospectively reviewed 50 client-owned dogs with naturally occurring septic arthritis presented in eastern Libya between 2017 and 2025. Recorded variables comprised lameness (1–5), joint swelling (0–3), pain on a 0–10 visual analogue scale, orthogonal radiographs, high-resolution B-mode ultrasonography, synovial fluid cytology, aerobic culture, disk-diffusion susceptibility testing to CLSI VET01, and haematoxylin–eosin histopathology graded on a four-tier synovitis scale. Eleven dogs with chronic culture-negative synovitis received a single intra-articular injection of autologous platelet-rich plasma (PRP) after lavage, with follow-up biopsy at four to six weeks. Results. Males predominated (56%) and the stifle was the joint most often involved (38%). Five variables predicted high-grade (grade ≥ 3) synovitis: lameness ≥ 4 (odds ratio [OR] 90.3, p < 0.001), pain ≥ 7 (OR 22.1, p < 0.001), radiographic joint space narrowing (OR 41.8, p < 0.001), subchondral osteolysis (OR 37.1, p < 0.001) and symptom duration beyond 30 days (OR 9.1, p = 0.038). Staphylococcus pseudintermedius was the commonest isolate (28.6%), and meticillin-resistant staphylococci accounted for 16.3% of positive cultures. Amikacin retained the greatest in-vitro activity (92%). Pannus, cartilage erosion and grade-3 synovitis each predicted failure to resolve by 30 days. Post-PRP biopsies showed villous re-epithelialisation, subsynovial fibrosis and angiogenesis without microbiological or histological evidence of recurrent infection. Conclusions. Canine septic arthritis in eastern Libya is driven predominantly by coagulase-positive staphylococci. Two bedside scores (lameness, pain) and two radiographic signs (joint space narrowing, osteolysis) identify high-risk animals reliably enough to guide urgent management where advanced diagnostics are unavailable. Intra-articular PRP appeared well tolerated in carefully selected post-infectious dogs, although the uncontrolled design of that subgroup precludes any inference of efficacy.