YOUR SECOND OPINION ON HEALTH YOU CAN TRUST AND USE WITH CONFIDENCE

What Doctors Don't Tell You is the complete review of health problems and safer, proven ways of treating them. WDDTY is a monthly journal - described as the best in the world - it's a research database, and it's a portal for you to share your health experiences.

email to friend Printer friendly

e-news

Antibiotics: They never help cold-like symptoms

20 March 2008

One of the main reasons that people visit the doctor is for cold-like symptoms – which medicine calls upper respiratory tract infections or rhinosinusitis. And the patient usually walks away with a prescription for a course of antibiotics.

Around 90 per cent of patients will be given the drug, even though doctors are recommended to wait seven days as only those cases of rhinosinusitis that last that long suggest a bacterial infection.

But even this strategy is wrong, new research suggests. Researchers at the University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland, reviewed nine studies that involved 2,547 patients with rhinosinusitis and found that virtually nobody benefited from antibiotics.

Even elderly patients, whose symptoms were more severe and whose recovery time was longer, didn’t fare any better when they took the drug.

The researchers reckon that 15 patients with rhinosinusitis symptoms would have to be given antibiotics before one additional patient was cured.

(Source: The Lancet, 2008; 371: 908-14).

Infant with constant infections - A reader would appreciate any help and advice for her 10-month-old grandson, who always seems to be unwell. He suffers from wheezing, thought to be a...

The common cold - This greatest bugbear of an upper respiratory tract infection is usually caused by bacteria or viruses, or even occasionally, allergic reactions.

Antibiotics: Not so fast, doc - The doctor’s promise to ‘first do no harm’ may have to be altered to: ‘First do nothing’. Doctors who do not immediately prescribe antibiotics for tr...

Doctors dole out antibiotics to babies - US doctors are still over prescribing antibiotics to babies, a new study reveals. ...

Infection: - How to treat without antibiotics - The fall in antibiotic prescribing hasn't resulted in an increase in bacterial infections, as we reported last week, and it could be because patients...

Iuds:hidden infections - While the Lancet was trumpeting the safety of long term placement of interuterine devices, the New England Journal of Medicine warned they could cause...

Rising antibiotic use: doctors blame their patients - Who is to blame for the rising inappropriate use of antibiotics? A new report suggests that doctors believe that, in many cases, the overprescribing o...

Register for our health updates and free gifts.

How You Beat Asthma
How To Beat Your M.E.
How You Beat ADHD
How You Beat Arthritis
How You Beat Backpain
How You Beat Depression How You Beat Pain
How You Beat The Menopause
How You Beat Heart Problems
WDDTY Health Shop