To compare short- and long-course antibiotic therapy for bacterial bone infections, assessing treatment failure and antibiotic-related adverse events.
Approach:
Design: Systematic review and meta-analysis restricted to randomized controlled trials; the protocol was registered in PROSPERO and the review followed PRISMA guidelines.
Search and eligibility: PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and ClinicalTrials.gov were searched from inception through February 2026. Eligible trials compared short- with long-course antibiotics for bacterial bone infections.
Outcomes and analysis: The primary outcome was treatment failure, defined as recurrence, persistent infection, or an unplanned additional intervention. Antibiotic-related adverse events were also assessed. Random-effects Mantel–Haenszel analyses used intention-to-treat and per-proto…
Quality assessment: Two reviewers independently extracted data and assessed risk of bias using the Cochrane ROB1 tool.
Interpretation:
The supplied context describes the rationale and planned methods but does not provide study results or pooled estimates; comparative effects cannot be summarized from this material.
Limitations:
The provided article context ends during the methods section and contains no included-trial details, results, or certainty-of-evidence findings.
“Using DOOR can provide clinicians and patients with a better understanding of the benefits and risks of new anti-infectives being studied to treat skin infections.”
Amoxicillin-clavulanate was not linked to lower treatment failure but was associated with a slightly higher risk of secondary infections compared with amoxicillin in adults with uncomplicated acute sinusitis.
