Topical Vancomycin for Neurosurgery Wound Prophylaxis

Surgery Clinical Trial

— Vanguard  

Official title:

Topical Vancomycin for the Reduction of Surgical Site Infections in Neurosurgery

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Active, not recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT02284126
• Other study ID #: AAAN3703
• Secondary ID: 1R01HS022903-01
• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Phase: Phase 3
• Start date: October 2014
• Est. completion date: June 2021

Study information

• Verified date: March 2021
• Source: Columbia University
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

This study is a collaboration between New York Presbyterian (NYP)-Columbia and NYP-Cornell that seeks to evaluate the use of topical vancomycin and its reduction on surgical site infection (SSI) in neurosurgical procedures. Adult patients undergoing neurosurgery at either institution will be eligible for participation in this randomized control trial. Patients randomized to the treatment group will receive 2g of vancomycin applied as a powder or paste to the wound site and/or bone flap. Subjects in the control group will receive the current standard of care without topical vancomycin. All subjects will undergo swabbing of the anterior nares and the surgical site prior to surgery, once 10-14 days following the operation and 90 days following the operation. The primary outcome measure will be surgical site infection, assessed daily throughout the hospital stay, at the first follow-up visit, and by telephone at 14-30 days and 90 days (+/- 7 days). Secondary outcomes will include length of hospital stay, length of intensive care stay, rate of reoperation and patient mortality. In addition, systemic vancomycin levels will be assessed at 6 hours and 20 hours postoperatively in each patient. Patients who have an external ventricular drain in place will have vancomycin levels assessed daily. In patients who have cranial drains placed, vancomycin concentrations will be analyzed from daily in wound drainage. Skin and nasal flora will be analyzed to assess the impact of topical vancomycin on the patient microbiome. Although there has been a decrease in the incidence of infections following craniotomy secondary to prophylactic intravenous antibiotics, proper sterile techniques, and other interventions, SSIs continue to significantly impact morbidity, mortality, and cost burden. Although never studied in neurosurgical procedures other than instrumented spine, the application of topical vancomycin to the surgical site prior to wound closure has demonstrated a reduction in SSIs in spine, cardiac and ophthalmologic procedures. The benefits of using prophylactic vancomycin topically, as opposed to intravenously, include reduced systemic levels of the drug, and therefore, a decreased probability of adverse events related to the drug, such as inducing resistance among the native flora. The investigators propose a single-blinded randomized control trial to evaluate the effectiveness of topical vancomycin in reducing SSIs rates following neurosurgical procedures.

Description:

Surgical-site infections (SSIs) occur in up to 500,000 patients per year in the United States. Patients with SSIs require significantly longer hospital stays and higher health care expenditures. In fact, it is estimated that SSIs are responsible for almost 4 million excess hospital days and billions of dollars in added hospital charges every year. Additionally, SSIs are a significant source of morbidity and mortality for surgical patients. Thus, prompt and definitive measures are necessary in order to redress this significant public health concern. Over the past few decades, the implementation of a number of preventative measures-including improved techniques in pre-operative skin antisepsis and antibiotic prophylaxis-have led to significant reductions in the rate of SSIs. Studies have demonstrated that approximately half of all SSIs are preventable with the proper use of prophylactic antibiotics. Despite these dramatic improvements, SSIs remain a tremendous burden on the healthcare system. Our unpublished analysis of the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) in 2010 identified 117,000 craniotomies with a 2.4% rate of infection and 1.37% rate of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)-associated infection. Extrapolating to the full national population, there were 585,000 craniotomies and 14,040 post-operative infections. Published series report the rate of infection in intracranial neurosurgery to range from 1% to as high as 11%. This rate varies depending on the presence of hardware, prior radiotherapy, procedure duration, re-operation, and the presence of a CSF leak. The 30-day outcome associated with SSI following craniotomy was recently reported to be a minor disability in 12.8%, major disability in 7.7% and death in 5.1%. The financial burden of nosocomial infection in neurosurgery makes up a disproportionate component of the total national cost burden. A study of nosocomial infection in the US in 1995 estimated a per-patient cost of $2100 and a total cost of $4.5 billion while a recent British study focusing on post-craniotomy SSI identified a per-SSI cost of £9283, or $14,166. Given the tremendous potential for lifelong morbidity and mortality as a result of cranial SSIs, further reductions in the rate of SSI would be essential for the benefit of neurosurgical patients, as well as for the healthcare system as a whole.Topical formulations of vancomycin offer the possibility of direct application to the surgical wound, with minimal additional systemic drug exposure. Adjunctive vancomycin powder applied topically to surgical wound edges has been shown to significantly lower the SSI rate in both cardiothoracic surgery and spinal surgery. Importantly, laboratory analyses of blood and wound drainage samples from patients treated with vancomycin powder have demonstrated high vancomycin concentrations in the surgical wound, and simultaneously low drug concentrations in the peripheral blood, thereby confirming minimal systemic absorption in the setting of enhanced protection of the surgical site. Furthermore, there have been no reports of an increased rate of drug-related complications with the addition of vancomycin powder to standard antibiotic prophylaxis regimens.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Enrollment: 1103
• Est. completion date: June 2021
• Est. primary completion date: November 2019
• Accepts healthy volunteers: No
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years and older

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• Adult (18+) neurosurgical procedure (ie.Craniotomy, Craniectomy, and Cranioplasty)

Exclusion Criteria:

• Creatinine > 1.50 mg/dL on admission

• Vancomycin allergy (documented or self-reported)

• Evidence of infection at or near the planned surgical site

• No planned dural or dural-substitute closure

• Spinal instrumentation (topical vancomycin is already standard of care)

• No surface area to apply:Carotid endarterectomy, MRI-guided laser ablation

• Trans-sphenoidal approach

• Acoustic neuroma resection

• Surgeon preference for or against use in the given procedure

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Communicable Diseases
• Infection
• Nervous System Diseases
• Surgery

Intervention

Drug:
• Vancomycin
Topically applied powder and paste to surgical site at time of closure.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	Columbia University Medical Center	New York	New York

Sponsors (4)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Columbia University	Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Cornell University, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Any Surgical-site Infection as Evidenced by Surgeon or Attending Physician Diagnosis, or Signs and Symptoms of Infection Assessed by Phone Call Interview or at In-office Follow-up Consultation	Classified as superficial incisional, deep incisional, or organ/space (intradural) infection	30 days & 90 days (+/- 7 days) postoperatively
Primary	Number of Subjects That Reported Any Surgical-site Infections	As evidenced by surgeon or attending physician diagnosis, or signs and symptoms of infection assessed by phone call interview or at in-office follow-up consultation. Classified as superficial incisional, deep incisional, or organ/space (intradural) infection.	30 days & 90 days (+/- 7 days) postoperatively
Secondary	Serum Vancomycin Levels	Vancomycin levels in serum will be tested after surgery, any additional fluid collections, but if and only if clinically indicated. The data is collected post-operative and will not be analyzed until the end of the study with another collaborator using Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) and New York State (NYS) datasets.	6-20 hours post-operatively
Secondary	Development of Previously Undetected Vancomycin Resistance	Microbial swabs will be obtained by the clinical coordinator preoperatively, post-operatively, at 10-14 days and at 90 days. Staph aureus isolates from mannitol growth will be tested for vancomycin resistance, comparing preoperative baseline and postoperative timepoints for development of increased vancomycin resistance. The data is collected post-operative and will not be analyzed until the end of the study with another collaborator using SPARCS and NYS datasets.	90 days postoperatively