Bone and joint infections in Oxford: a 10-year retrospective review.

Septic arthritis (SA) and osteomyelitis (OM) can present as medical emergencies in children. Typically, antimicrobial treatment for bone and joint infections is between 1 and 2 weeks of intravenous treatment followed by an oral antibiotic course of 2–4 weeks.1 2 However, recent data from a large randomised controlled trial in adults3 show that oral therapy is non-inferior to intravenous therapy. Short intravenous courses reduce length of hospital stay, support antimicrobial stewardship and improve patient quality of life. We describe the epidemiology of bone and joint infections at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, over the last decade in order to inform improved management. We identified cases of SA and OM from September 2009 to February 2019 using hospital discharge clinical coding data. Inclusion criteria were (1) children <16 years of age (2) with clinical or radiological features typical of SA or OM who …