Antibiotic Therapy After Incision and Drainage for Abscess
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00900510. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Official title
The Use of Adjuvant Antibiotic Therapy After Incision and Drainage for Pediatric Abscess: A Prospective, Randomized, Double-blinded, Placebo-Controlled Trial
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Background: Skin abscesses are a growing problem in the general pediatric population around the world. While the standard treatment for an abscess/boil is incision and drainage, many physicians also prescribe antibiotics, despite the lack of evidence that antibiotics are necessary to help the wound heal. The purpose of this research study is to determine whether antibiotics are necessary after incision and drainage of a skin abscess in children. This is an important question because medical evidence has shown that using antibiotics when they are not needed has contributed to the increase of bacterial antibiotic resistance. In fact, several of the antibiotics that successfully killed Staph bacteria several years ago are now no longer effective because of antibiotic resistance. Now resistant forms of Staph bacteria, called "Community-Acquired Methicillin-Resistant Staph Aureus" (CA-MRSA), account for 50-85% of all pediatric skin abscesses. If antibiotics are not necessary then withholding them when appropriate may help slow the progression of antibiotic-resistant Staph infections. Objective(s) and Hypothesis(es): The investigators believe that antibiotics are no better than placebo at achieving a cure after drainage of an abscess in a child. The objective of this study is to answer the question: Do antibiotics after abscess drainage result in a better chance of cure than placebo? Potential Impact: If abscess drainage alone is shown to be as effective as drainage followed by antibiotics, then the routine use of antibiotics for this problem could be avoided. This would help limit the increasing antibiotic resistance of bacteria (especially CA-MRSA) in communities around the world. A well-designed study may provide the evidence to change the way children are treated for abscesses in a future where antibiotic resistant bacteria will be even more of a public health challenge.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT00900510
- Recruitment status
- Withdrawn
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- Not listed
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Interventions
- Incision and drainage Procedure
- Trimethoprim/Sulfamethoxazole (Bactrim) Drug
- Placebo Drug
Procedure · Drug
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 6 Months to 18 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Apr 30, 2009
- Primary completion
- Apr 30, 2011
- Completion
- Apr 30, 2011
- Last update posted
- Nov 5, 2017
2009 – 2011
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wake Forest University School of Medicine | Winston-Salem | North Carolina | 27157 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00900510, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Nov 5, 2017 · Synced Sep 9, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT00900510 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.