Elie Berbari, MD
My primary area of research interest is focused on osteoarticular infections. Since 1996, I have been involved in the design and execution of numerous research projects. Mainly, I am interested in the analysis of controversial factors associated with the occurrence of prosthetic joint infection. We are in the process of conducting a large prospective case-control study looking at the risk of PJI following dental and other invasive procedures. Furthermore, I am interested in looking at novel factors related to the host that can be associated with the occurrence of PJI (i.e. Toll like receptors defect, etc.). The outcome of patients with PJI treated with a variety of medical and surgical management strategies has long been an interest of mine. For instance, the use of a quinolone-rifampin combination in the treatment of orthopedic hardware infection treated with debridement and component retention is currently the subject of an ongoing prospective cohort study. We have developed the PJI registry that has information on more than 4000 patients with PJI since 1969. This registry has information on host factors, management and outcome of patients with PJI. This registry can be a potential source for many future clinical projects.
We have recently developed the vertebral osteomyelitis database and were able to study the utility of imaging techniques in the diagnosis and follow-up of patients with spine infection.
