What Is Osteomyelitis?
8. Surgical Treatment
Surgical treatment of osteomyelitis becomes necessary if antibiotic treatment alone is not effective. The main goal of surgical treatment for osteomyelitis is to prevent it from spreading any further. Rarely, if the infection is severe enough and cannot be controlled any other way, the only option is to amputate the entire limb.
Fortunately, amputation is only necessary in the most severe cases of osteomyelitis. Usually, it is only necessary to remove the area of the bone damaged due to osteonecrosis. To ensure complete removal of infected bone, the surgeon also takes a small margin of healthy tissue. You may have a graft later to replace the tissue that was removed.
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