Dr. Jim Young of University Hospital Basel, Switzerland believes that a recent study he led shows that doctors often have difficulty discerning between sinus infections that can be cured by antibiotics and those that can't.
Due to the increased resistance to antibiotics, Young has suggested that they not be used...
even on rhinosinusitis patients suffering symptoms for more than a week.
"Antibiotics offer little benefit for patients with acute rhinosinusitis-like complaints," stated Young. "Antibiotics are not justified even if a patient reports symptoms for longer than 7-10 days."
Young's team want to establish how efficient doctors are at telling the difference between viral infections, which cannot be cured by antibiotics and bacterial diseases so they reviewed data from nine trials involving more than 2,500 adult patients. They reviewed data that included facial pain, pus-filled nasal discharge or prior cold, all symptoms which previously were thought to help diagnose bacterial vs viral infection. They found that only 1 in 15 patients prescribed antibiotics benefitted from the drug.
Endoscopy, nasal cytology and X-ray are the 3 ways to determine is the sinus infection is bacterial however, all three are expensive and time-consuming and not a workable solution.
[Source: MedlinePlus]
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