This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Pediatrics, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: In his Clinical Crossroads article about a 15-month-old child with recurrent otitis media, Dr Paradise¹ concluded that it would be "injudicious" to withhold antibiotics from patients with acute otitis media (AOM). However, he did not consider important evidence necessary to place the discussion in its proper context.

Although antibiotics appear to have some beneficial effect in the treatment of AOM, the magnitude of benefit appears small. A recent review of studies designed to address this question found no reduction in pain at 24 hours and only a 5% absolute reduction in the number of patients with pain after 2 to 7 days.² This means that approximately 17 children must be treated with antibiotics to prevent 1 child from having pain during the same period. One of the studies cited by Paradise noted about a 13% absolute reduction in symptoms at day 4 in children younger than 2 . . . [Full Text of this Article]

RELATED ARTICLES

Recurrent Otitis Media in Children
Luca Mascitelli and Francesca Pezzetta
JAMA. 2003;289(11):1383.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Recurrent Otitis Media in Children
M. Boyd Gillespie
JAMA. 2003;289(11):1383-1384.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Recurrent Otitis Media in Children
Kimberly G. Lee
JAMA. 2003;289(11):1384.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Recurrent Otitis Media in Children—Reply
Jack L. Paradise
JAMA. 2003;289(11):1384-1385.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

A 15-Month-Old Child With Recurrent Otitis Media
Jack L. Paradise
JAMA. 2002;288(20):2589-2598.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT