WHITE 7 - WHISH – Wound Healing in Surgery for Hip fractures

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    A Randomised Controlled Feasibility Trial of Standard Wound Management versus Negative Pressure Wound Therapy in the Treatment of Adult Patients Having Surgical Incisions for Hip Fractures

  • IRAS ID

    219384

  • Contact name

    James Masters

  • Contact email

    james.masters@ndorms.ox.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    Oxford University

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    1 years, 5 months, 4 days

  • Research summary

    What is the problem?

    Hip fractures affect 70 000 patients/year in the UK, and it is predicted that 100 000 people will suffer a hip fracture inthe UK by 2020. Almost all patients undergo surgery to enable them to start walking again. However, between 2% and 7% of patients will get a wound infection. These infections are very serious and lead to a much longer hospital stay, more surgery and for half of the patients-death.

    In surgery, the use of negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT)-a type of suction dressing-is increasing rapidly. However it has not been tested rigorously in a formal trial, and it has not been looked at for hip fracture surgery specifically.

    To this end we propose a study to better understand the scale of the infection problem in hip fracture surgery and to explore whether it will be feasible to run a large multicentre trial comparing NPWT with normal wound dressings.

    This will involve 464 people who have broken their hip being allocated to either a 'standard dressing' or the NPWT dressing. Each patient will be assessed to see whether they develop an infection as well as the routine questions that are asked of all people who break their hip. The study will provide critical information as to how many people develop infection in each group which will allow us to make a decision on the full scale study.

  • REC name

    South Central - Oxford C Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    17/SC/0207

  • Date of REC Opinion

    8 Jun 2017

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion