EXTEND

The EXTEND trial – we need you!

September 2024: 480 patients have been recruited

The trial is still going for 1 more year – so plenty of time to get involved

NITCAR is supporting the EXTEND trial. NITCAR have undertaken a number of observational studies, and are now keen to encourage trainees to start recruiting for interventional studies via the EXTEND trial. This will help answer an important clinical question, and build research capacity within the infection specialty.

For more information please see the project website: EXTEND – Health Sciences, University of York

The EXTEND team are seeking colleagues, including trainees from infection, to recruit to the EXTEND trial, and work alongside research nurses. It is hoped that trainees getting involved in the trial will do so whilst completing the Associate Principal Investigator (API) scheme. 

The EXTEND trial will compare two antibiotic treatment strategies for patients with complicated intra-abdominal infection. The first strategy is standard treatment, as decided by treating clinicians; and the second is a fixed-extended-duration of 28 days antibiotics. The trial has started recruiting participants from July 2022.

The EXTEND trial has been funded by the NIHR (https://fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk/award/NIHR131784). The funding application was based on a NITCAR national project which collected data on the management of patients with complicated intra-abdominal infection from 31 NHS hospitals. The project (CABI), showed that patients with complicated intra-abdominal infection were normally treated with about 2 weeks of antibiotics and a third of patients had no source control procedure undertaken (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33615351/)

The high rates of treatment failure in patients with complicated intra-abdominal infection led to us piloting a fixed-extended-duration of 28 days antibiotics (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32140989/)

If you would like to find out more about getting involved please contact us at: ytu-extend-trial@york.ac.uk, or a.kirby@leeds.ac.uk

For more information about the API scheme please see: https://www.york.ac.uk/healthsciences/research/trials/research/trials/extend/