Study questions the effectiveness

ABC NEWS (Australia)

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.

Transcript

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]

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