Study questions the effectiveness
Antibiotic treatment is standard in knee and hip replacements given the risk of infection. However an Australian study - published in the New England Journal of Medicine - has called into question the use of these antibiotics’ Trisha Peel is an infectious diseases clinician with Monash University and explains the findings of her research.
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00:00 So when patients undergo hip or knee replacement, we do give them an antibiotic as part of standard
00:07 of care.
00:08 However, over the last decade or so, we've seen that some patients are getting infections
00:14 due to a more resistant bacteria.
00:17 And so we have been questioning whether giving an additional antibiotic may be beneficial
00:23 to our patients.
00:25 So how did you go about testing this and whether it was doing good by the patients?
00:30 Yes, so we conducted a randomised control trial.
00:33 So that means that we give half of the patients the antibiotic in addition to their standard
00:38 of care, and then also half the placebo to see if it truly is beneficial or not.
00:46 So they're all getting an antibiotic, but some of the group are getting this second
00:50 or different dose of antibiotics.
00:53 What did you find with this?
00:55 So we found actually that the current approach, the standard antibiotic, was as good as if
01:02 not better than giving the additional antibiotic.
01:06 And in fact, we found in one group, giving the additional antibiotic actually was associated
01:11 with an increased risk of infection.
01:14 So those patients undergoing knee surgery.
01:16 Are there any theories as to why an extra antibiotic would actually result in a further
01:23 risk of infection?
01:24 Yeah, that's a great question.
01:26 And it was certainly an unexpected finding for us.
01:30 It's something that we're going to be looking into in more detail.
01:33 But I think it really highlights the importance of doing these trials.
01:37 We sometimes make assumptions that giving more will be better, but it's not always the
01:42 case.
01:43 And we would like to see that result replicated, no doubt.
01:47 But are there any other further studies that you would like to see based on this surprising
01:51 outcome that you've had?
01:53 I think we're always wanting to make sure we're getting the best possible outcomes for
01:57 our patients undergoing surgery.
01:59 And there are a lot of different ways we can potentially prevent these infections.
02:03 Doing this trial and getting these results then allows us to focus on other areas that
02:08 might actually be beneficial for our patients.
02:12 So that's really an important part of this study.
02:17 Dr Trisha Peel, infectious diseases clinician with Monash University and the leader of this
02:23 research, thank you for joining us.
02:25 Thank you, Gemma.
02:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]