Year: 2023
Type: letter
Abstract: We recently read the article by Grigorian et al. 1 which examined the timing of antibiotic administration in open lower extremity fractures and the associated risk of developing an infection while in the hospital.These injuries represent a substantial burden in the traumatized population and are often the bane of the treating orthopaedic surgeon due to the high rates of infection and subsequent nonunion.Factors associated with decreasing risk of poor outcomes in these patients include timely debridement, appropriate stabilization, and, perhaps most importantly, the early administration of antibiotics.Our understanding of these interventions has evolved tremendously from first studying infections in guinea pigs and bacterial doubling times to now making decisions based on receiver operating characteristic curves.In this current study, the authors conclude that the early administration of antibiotics is not associated with a decreased risk of an infection in open fractures, however this is very specifically only for inpatient infections, and the authors do not appropriately highlight this in their title or the body of the paper itself.We respectfully and strongly disagree with their findings and we have significant concerns about taking their conclusions to the extreme and removing this criteria as a quality metric.We explain our reasoning below.
Language: English
Subfield: Epidemiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4367600552