Participant Information Animation

Please watch our animation to find out more about The PIC Bone Study.

PIC Bone Participant Information Animation

The PIC Bone Study is trying to find the best way to spot bone and joint infections in children. Bone and joint infections happen when bugs, called bacteria, get into the blood and cause damage to a bone or joint. This can cause pain, swelling and sometimes a fever. When this happens, children might occasionally need surgery but most of the time they only need to take medicines called antibiotics. Each year in the UK over 10,000 children are investigated for bone and joint infection. Of those 1,800 are admitted to hospital for tests and treatment. We need to quickly identify and treat infection. However most children with these symptoms don’t have bone or joint infection. Most often it is a different minor condition which will go away without treatment. The PIC Bone study is taking place in 30 hospitals around the country. We want to find out which tests spot infections most quickly and accurately. Your doctor may take x-rays of your leg or arm and may also take special scans. Around the world doctors mainly use two different types of scan. One is an ultrasound scan, which involves putting some cold jelly on your body and taking a picture. The other is called an MRI and involves lying down for a few minutes while a noisy machine takes pictures. These pictures may help doctors spot a bone or joint infection. If you join the PIC Bone study, we would like to collect the results of all the tests you have. Three months after your hospital visit, we will be in touch with you and your family to find out how you are. The treatment you receive will not be affected by your decision to join or not to join the PIC Bone study. We will simply use your results, and those of lots of other children, to find the best way to test children with similar infections in the future. As well as the main study, we will invite a small number of children and their families to take part in some interviews. We want to find out what the people who have these scans think about them and how we can make these investigations easier for them. We may also invite you to take part in other research in the future. The doctors, nurses and research team are happy to answer any questions about joining the study.

Background

When a child is brought to the emergency department with a painful limb without an obvious injury, doctors are typically faced with a dilemma between two diagnoses:

A serious, though relatively uncommon, infection of their bones or joints OR
A non-serious, though common, temporary swelling to their joints

Serious infections in bones are rare, but can be limb and life threatening. They require urgent treatment (antibiotics) and sometimes surgery. Temporary joint swelling however, is common and resolves without any intervention within a few days. The challenge is to quickly identify which child has an infection and which has joint swelling. Telling these apart is often not easy and involves x-rays and blood tests. Often, ‘special tests’ are also used, which are ultrasound and/or MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans. Doctors around the world are unsure about the best choice of test, particularly the ‘special tests’, and in what order tests should be performed when a bone infection is suspected.

A clear pathway outlining which tests to perform, and when they are needed, would help to ensure that bone infections are not missed. This would also reduce unnecessary tests on children who do not have an infection.

The PIC Bone Study

Participant Information Animation

PIC Bone Participant Information Animation

Background

Taking Part

About the Study

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