Table 1.

Advantages and disadvantages of intravenous and direct injection of bacteriophage therapy for clinical biofilm infections.

	Direct Bacteriophage Therapy in Correlation with Surgical Interventions	Intravenous Bacteriophage Therapy
Advantages	Potentially shorter course with less risk of resistance and neutralizing antibodies occurring Direct injection of high titers to biofilm thereby achieving theoretical MOIs similarly to in vitro testing Removes majority of planktonic infection Ensures hardware salvageable Ensures no other pathogens present Allows for manual scrubbing of biofilm	Circumvent surgery and risks of general anesthesia No wounds created that thus no risk for further infections No confounders with proving efficacy either it works or does not work
Disadvantages	Risks of Anesthesia Risks of poor wound healing Chance for introduction of another pathogen during surgical interventions	Have to treat both planktonic and biofilm infection Limited ability to achieve MOIs that were tested with in vitro testing Limited identification of all pathogens involved to match to bacteriophage therapy Unable to assess prosthesis stability beyond radiographic findings Longer therapy with higher risk of resistance and neutralizing antibodies occurring