Treating chronic bone infection is challenging, requiring complete excision of the affected areas and antimicrobial therapy. Acquiring active concentrations of antibiotics is difficult, as well as filling up bone defects resulting from sequestrectomy, and very few methods of treatment address both issues simultaneously. The authors describe the clinical results after using Collatamp G, a collagen-based, antibiotic filled sponge with two actions: local delivery of high antibiotic doses without systemic side effects and enhancement of healing due to collagen, thus covering the bone defect without any further osteoplastic surgery. This paper thus identifies Collatamp G as a biomaterial able to solve the above mentioned problems in treating bone infections.Keywords: bone infections, collagen matrix, gentamicine, antibiotic delivery

Polytrauma represents one of the most challenging aspects of modern medicine, due to its high mortality and morbidity, affecting especially young, active patients. Therefore, research is nowadays directed towards optimising the treatment for these patients, which is extremely difficult, as polytrauma is characterized by a complicated pathophysiology with intricate pathways, potentially generating local and general complications and requiring a multidisciplinary approach. An essential issue for these patients is a careful monitoring algorithm, able to determine an appropriate therapeutic response in due time, so objective, measurable and reproducible elements able to do this have been sought. Since biochemical markers have these properties, and the most important pathogenic element in polytrauma is the Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS), the authors of this paper evaluate the predictive value of inflammatory markers in order to improve the monitoring algorithm of these patients. The results of this prospective study demonstrate some statistically significant correlations, such as those between lactate (at admission and 24 hours later) and mortality, as well as between IL-6 and early systemic complications, which are of great value because they can concentrate the efforts of the multidisciplinary team and save the life of the poytrauma patient.

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