<<starting. AND what about apalling sensitivity of these tests? What's a
guy
gonna do? I sense more Thwarted Hero Syndrome and slammed doors!>>
Aw shucks. Personally, as one who gets three or four sore throats every
winter, I wouldn't take an antibiotic for it unless I was so moribund I was
unable to fight. The research on antibiotic treatment of sore throats has
been around for umpteen years and I remember gathering some UK papers on it
about six years ago. Even then the conclusion was clear---no benefit from
antibiotics in nearly every case, no point in throat swabs, serology, diff
white counts, rapid strep tests etc, no evidence of any effect from
treatment on incidence of rheumatic fever (BTW it was decreed way back like
the early 1980s that UK-born citizens did not get rheumatic fever) or
post-strep glomerulonephritis. And after four years of struggle I finally
gave up when I found that the bastards were sneaking in or phoning a day or
two later to harangue my partner into giving them an antibiotic---he
couldn't refuse of course but that's another story. I finally agreed
that five days of Pen V at about 30p net ingredient cost would not break
the bank and would save us some time short term--I seemed to be the only
one in the practice able to take the long view but that is yet another
story.
Easy to pontificate, harder to put it into practice and sometimes the
biggest obstacles are not the patients.
BTW did you see how the light has finally dawned on the hills of academia
with a paper in a recent BMJ looking at why GPs prescribe antibiotics for
URTIs even when they know they shouldn't? Did you ever read such shite?
Declan
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