Request for Additional Details on the COPAT Trial

To the editor—We congratulate Drs Juskowich and team for publication of their very important randomized controlled trial, “Comparing Oral versus Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (COPAT).” [1] This ambitious study across 5 sites in the West Virginia University health system adds important results to the existing literature of oral therapy for osteomyelitis, bacteremia, and endocarditis. In order to maximize the impact of the study, it would be helpful if the authors could provide some additional detail around the specific types of infections enrolled, the specific pathogens causing those infections, and outcomes specific to the combinations of infection type and etiologic pathogen. Specifically, the authors indicate that endocarditis patients were enrolled; however, Table 2 labels them “Endovascular” rather than endocarditis, suggesting that other types of endovascular infections were also enrolled. Specific organism types are then described separately from the infection types. However, outcomes are not shown based on infection and pathogen combinations. We understand that sample sizes for some combinations will be very small.