Risks And Benefits Of Treatment Kids' Ear Infections With Antibiotics

Risks And Benefits Of Treatment Kids' Ear Infections With Antibiotics.
Antibiotics may servant more children with on the qui vive ear infections recover quickly, but the drugs also come with the endanger of side effects, concludes a new analysis of previous research. Between 4 and 10 percent of children know side effects, such as diarrhea or rash, from antibiotic use, according to the analysis. "If you have 100 fit children with an acute ear infection, about 80 would get better with just over-the-counter pest and fever relief - but if you treated all 100 of those kids with antibiotics, you would quickly smoke 92 of them.

But, the number of children who would benefit is similar to the number of children who would experience stand effects like diarrhea and rash," explained the study's lead author, Dr Tumaini Coker, an aide-de-camp professor of pediatrics at the Mattel Children's Hospital and the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles. "Parents genuinely have to weigh the risks and benefits of care when a child has an ear infection".

In addition to finding that early prescribing of antibiotics offers some improve in the treatment of ear infections, the researchers also found that newer, name-brand antibiotics didn't appear to be any more efficacious than old stand-bys, such as amoxicillin, which are often generic and less expensive. "Parents need to know that when a child gets an attention infection, antibiotic treatment might not always be the best option," said Coker, who is also a researcher at the RAND Corporation, a non-profit enquire institute. "And, for most healthy children with a newly diagnosed ear infection, we couldn't realize any evidence that newer antibiotics worked any better than older ones".

Acute ear infection (otitis media) is the most worn out reason that antibiotics are prescribed for children in the United States, according to CV information in the study. The average cost of an ear infection is $350 per child, which ends up costing the express health-care system about $2,8 billion annually.

The current review, conducted by the Southern California Evidence-Based Practice Center, looked at the diagnosis, directorship and outcomes of consideration infections in 135 studies done from 1999 to 2010 on acute otitis media. Coker said the deliberation of the analysis was "to provide the best evidence for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), since they are revising their guidelines for taste infections in children".

The new analysis also found that when doctors use an otoscope to gaze in a child's ear, the signs of a bulging tympanic membrane and redness are accurate ways to identify an acute ear infection. In addition, the review confirmed what doctors had suspected would happen with the introduction of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7): the hundred of infections with bacteria covered in that vaccine went down. Unfortunately, regard infections caused by other bacteria increased.

None of the studies reviewed looked at the possibility long-term harm of antibiotic use, such as antibiotic resistance, the researchers noted. Results of the examination are published in the Nov 17, 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Experts prominent that this review, like many analyzing already published studies, have some inherent limitations. "The problem with these lenient of reviews is that most of the studies are old," said Dr Alejandro Hoberman, chief of the division of popular academic pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. "We need better studies with clearer guidelines on diagnostic inclusion, and more stringent questions about antibiotic use," he added, noting such analyse is currently underway prescription. Hoberman, who's on the AAP board for developing new guidelines, said there will be a further focus on improving the diagnosis of ear infections, so that those children who would benefit most from treatment will be the ones who are getting antibiotics.