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By C. Bluestone and J. Klein.
4th ed, 462 pp (with CD-ROM), $89.95.
Hamilton, ON, BC Decker, 2007.
ISBN-13 978-1-5500-9335-3.

JAMA. 2007;298(19):2316-2317.

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

In the year 2000, 16 million visits were made to office-based physicians in the United States for otitis media. In fact, otitis media is the most common reason for visits to pediatricians by ill children and is the most common infection for which antibacterial agents are prescribed for children in the United States. Although an apparent increase in this diagnosis occurred during the final quarter of the 20th century, otitis media is not a new disease. For example, among the other historical gems scattered throughout this text, readers discover that tympanic membrane perforations were found in 2600-year-old Egyptian mummies, that 27% of all pediatric admissions to Bellevue Hospital in 1932 were for the treatment of purulent otitis media, and that acute mastoiditis was the most common infection for which infants and children were hospitalized in this country during the preantibiotic era. Times have changed; hospitalization for otitis and its complications . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Leslie L. Barton, MD, Reviewer
Department of Pediatrics
University of Arizona Health Sciences Center
Tucson
llb@peds.arizona.edu