On Wednesday, October 22nd, Mount Sinai Hospital (Toronto, Ontario) and Hospital Universitario Austral (Buenos Aires, Argentina) enrolled the 59th and 60th patients in the PARITY trial, respectively, thereby completing enrolment for the pilot phase of the study. The PARITY pilot has proven feasibility of a Canadian multi-center randomized controlled trial in orthopaedic oncology. Indeed, the pilot phase has exceeded expectations by successfully expanding internationally to sites in the United States, Australia, and Argentina. As a result of this early success, these pilot phase patients will be rolled into the definitive phase sample size of 600 patients.
The PARITY trial is investigating whether long duration post-operative prophylactic antibiotics decreases the incidence of surgical site infections compared to the standard shorter duration among patients undergoing surgical excision and endoprosthetic reconstruction of lower extremity bone tumors. Led by Dr. Michelle Ghert, PARITY is the first rigorously designed trial in the field of orthopaedic oncology and has the potential to significantly impact clinical practice and establish a collaborative network worldwide for future research in the field. Prior to PARITY, orthopaedic oncologists doubted that prospective multi-center randomized trials were possible in their specialty. The success of the PARITY pilot has demonstrated that these types of studies are, in fact, possible.