Introducing the ORION Statement, a CONSORT equivalent for infection control studies

The ORION statement (guidelines for transparent reporting of Outbreak Reports and Intervention studies Of Nosocomial infection) is a CONSORT equivalent for infection control studies.', 2 It aims to improve standards of research and publication in infection control studies. A symposium at the Hospital Infection Society Conference consisted of three presentations. The first aimed to introduce the statement, its purpose, development, utility, and future dissemination and revision. Like CONSORT, ORION has a checklist against which studies should be evaluated. The audience was provided with this and with two papers, one almost fully ORION compliant, (3) and the other not.(4) The other two presentations considered how the most common study design in this field, the interrupted time series (ITS), could provide strong levels of evidence if conducted, reported and analysed appropriately, and showed how this could be achieved in the case of interventions to improve antibiotic prescribing.