Fig. 2.

Culture results for twenty female patients (left of the vertical line) and twenty-one male patients (right of the vertical line) who underwent revision shoulder arthroplasty for issues other than clinically apparent infection (i.e., stiffness, pain, or component loosening). Triangles indicate the result of dermal cultures obtained immediately after the skin incision (Initial dermis). Squares indicate the result of dermal cultures obtained immediately prior to the administration of antibiotics (Final dermis). Solid dots indicate the results of the deep cultures. The vertical axis indicates the total degree of positivity for each of the specimens obtained with use of the system described for Figure 1. For the deep cultures, the Propionibacterium score indicates the sum of the degrees of positivity for all deep cultures of specimens obtained from the shoulder. In contrast to what was found for the male patients, the dermal and deep cultures for the female patients were consistently negative. Male patients with positive dermal cultures often had positive deep cultures as well.