For those of us working in research, everyday seems like Clinical Trials Day. Between meeting with patients, analyzing data, evaluating study protocols, the daily tasks seem endless, especially with 270+ current clinical trials underway. However, on this Clinical Trials Day (May 20, 2019) we are choose to pause and take a look at the advancements happening right now thanks to research inside OrthoCarolina clinics.
Let’s break it down:
Currently, we have 376 patients are enrolled in 20 active sponsored studies, with 15 sponsored studies in the start-up phase.
Sponsored studies are in partnership with companies that are researching treatment options and methods for patients. OCRI participates in three kinds of sponsored studies regulated by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). These include: Investigational Device Exemptions (IDEs), Investigational New Drugs (IND), and post-market studies.
Although they are all interesting to us, one particularly special current sponsored study is in partnership with Joint Purification Systems (JPS).
Right now, when a patient has an infected total joint, they have one surgery to remove all the infected hardware and then they have to wait 3-6 months with no joint while they are on IV and oral antibiotics. After this time, if their joint shows no sign of infection, they can have the second stage surgery to put in new hardware.
The JPS pilot study is looking to see if a constant infusion of local antibiotics for 7-10 days at the infected joint after the first stage surgery will yield better results for the patient. Instead of having to wait months for their Stage II surgery, the patient only has to wait a week since their joint has been constantly flushed and infused with antibiotics. That would change the game in how infections are treated. (We told you… Pretty interesting, right?)
We would be remiss if we didn’t give a shout out to our other sponsor partners who are doing cool things too:
Smith & Nephew, DePuy, Fziomed, Nuvasive, Corin, Zimmer-Biomet, Relievant, Spinal Kinetics, Moximed, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Bioventus, Pacira, and Invibio.
Sponsored studies are what you may imagine when thinking about Clinical Research. However, at OCRI we have far more (over 250) investigator-initiated studies underway. That means the study ideas are thought up by OrthoCarolina physicians.
They pitch their ideas for research, proper protocol is written up, and the research takes off. The results from these investigator-initiated studies are shared with the orthopedic community through international presentations at professional conferences and publications in prestigious medical journals.
To learn more about the research happening within OrthoCarolina Research Institute, go to orthocarolinaresearch.org/research.
