Getting your player ready...
LOS ANGELES — The medical consensus on whether to give antibiotics to young children with ear infections has been swinging from one extreme to the other as conflicting clinical trials have pushed pediatricians first toward widespread use of the drugs, then toward a “watch and wait” approach in which most infections seem to clear up on their own.
Two new trials reported Wed nesday in the New England Journal of Medicine are nudging the pendulum back toward treatment of the infections, especially for the youngest children. They show that the use of antibiotics in infants and toddlers under age 2 is only modestly effective and reduces the duration of symptoms by only a small amount, but it prevents relapses and progression of the infection.
