This fact box will help you to weigh the benefits and harms of antibiotics for children with an acute middle ear infection. The information and numbers are based on the best scientific evidence currently available.
This fact box was developed by the Harding Center for Risk Literacy.
An acute middle ear infection is an infection of the middle ear. People with the infection might have severe earache, a fever, and pus or blood oozing from their ear [1].
Antibiotics are among the most important drugs for treating infectious diseases. However, they work only against bacteria, not against viruses.
Children who have acute middle ear infections that don’t go away or get worse [1].
Instead of antibiotics, painkillers can be given to relieve pain. Closely watching whether the child’s symptoms get worse before giving an antibiotic is another possibility [1].
This fact box compares the advantages and disadvantages of antibiotics and placebo for children who had an acute middle ear infection.
The table may be read as follows:
24 out of 100 children who took a fake pill still felt pain 4 to 7 days after they were diagnosed. 18 out of 100 children who took antibiotics still felt pain after the same amount of time.
The numbers in this fact box are rounded off. They are based on 13 medical studies that looked at 3,401 children [1].
Using antibiotics too often may make bacteria resistant to antibiotics. This means that antibiotics are no longer able to kill bacteria or to slow them down in spreading. An especially big problem is when bacteria change genetically so that antibiotics no longer work as well [2].
Overall, the evidence is very reliable. The results listed in the fact box will probably stay the same in the future [1].
- June 2016 (last update)
Information within the fact box was obtained from the following sources:
[1] Venekamp RP, Sanders SL, Glasziou PP, et al. Antibiotics for acute otitis media in children. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2015(6):CD000219. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD000219.pub4.
[2] BMG (Ed.). Die wichtigsten Begriffe zum Thema Antibiotika-Resistenzen. 2015. Available from: https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/themen/praevention/antibiotika-resistenzen/die-wichtigsten-begriffe.html
Documentation on how the numbers in the fact box were determined is available on request.