Commentary: research directions for treatment for acute otitis media

摘要

Some children are greatly troubled with acute otitis media; others are hardly inconvenienced. This useful subgroup analysis predicts which children benefit most from antibiotics for acute otitis media (mostly those with a temperature > 37.5℃ or vomiting; about one in five affected children) and the size of the benefit (the number of children we need to treat to shorten the illness is as high as three to six). So we still need to weigh potential benefits against costs, case by case, mixing parental preference and other relevant clinical and psychosocial information into the clinical decision.