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John Sawyer, MD; Daniel Stryer, MD; Matthew Rydberg, MD; Barbara Polstein, DO
Kayenta Indian Health Service Clinic Kayenta, Ariz

JAMA. 1995;274(17):1341.

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

To the Editor.

—We have several questions regarding the article by Dr Williams and colleagues.¹ If decongestants alone produce a clinical response in 70% of patients² and another 25% of patients have continued symptoms regardless of the duration of therapy,¹ then a priori we would expect to find no clinically important difference between 3 vs 10 days of antibiotic therapy. That is, most people will be better and some will be worse regardless of how long they take antibiotics. Although these numbers were generated from slightly different populations, they suggest the study is vastly underpowered to find a statistical difference between the two treatment arms.

Second, if clinical success incorporates "cure, much improved, and slightly improved" and clinical failure incorporates "same or worse," then Table 3 would show 34 successes and five failures for 3 days of antibiotics vs 36 successes and one failure for 10 days . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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