Sinus Infection Care Center

Accord­ing to St. Louis’ Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine inves­ti­ga­tors, antibi­otics are not any bet­ter than inac­tive place­bos to lessen the symp­toms peo­ple feel from sinus infections.

Oto­laryn­gol­ogy pro­fes­sor Dr. Jay F. Pic­cir­illo said patients are not get­ting any bet­ter quicker nor have less sinus infec­tions when tak­ing antibi­otics. The results show antibi­otics are unnec­es­sary for the most basic sinus infec­tions, as folks tend to get bet­ter them­selves.  This study can be found in Feb­ru­ary 15’s Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion edition.

Accord­ing to the authors, in the U.S. alone, nearly one in five pre­scrip­tions for antibi­otics is writ­ten for sinus infec­tions. Now, there are a num­ber of drugs that don’t work on bac­te­ria. And, because of that it’s impor­tant if this is an effec­tive kind of treat­ment. Accord­ing to the research, the results are not effective.

Research Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Med­i­cine Dr. Jane M. Gar­butt said antibi­otics are being over­pre­scribed in the primary-care set­ting.  How­ever, the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion is lead­ing a move­ment to improve the pru­dent use of antibi­otics.  Gar­butt said the study was done to pro­vide sci­en­tific proof for doc­tors so that they can explain to their patients why antibi­otics isn’t likely going to help with their acute sinus infection.

Researchers sug­gest deal­ing with the symp­toms – cough, con­ges­tion and pain — using a wait and see method to deter­mine if any fur­ther treat­ment is needed instead of using antibiotics.

166 adults were involved with the study; every one of their symp­toms fit the acute sinus infec­tion cri­te­ria that was rec­om­mended by an expert panel with the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion. For par­tic­i­pa­tion, a patient’s symp­toms needed to be cat­e­go­rized as mod­er­ate, severe or very severe. They also have to report ten­der­ness or pain in the sinuses and face and have a last­ing nasal dis­charge of seven to 28 days. Patients with seri­ous com­pli­ca­tion or chronic sinus infec­tions did not get included in the study.

Patients were given either a 10-day course of antibi­otics such as amox­i­cillin or a placebo. Whether they got amox­i­cillin or not, every sin­gle patient obtained med­ica­tion for their cough, fever, con­ges­tion and reliev­ing pain.

Researchers judged the symp­toms of each patient at the begin­ning of the treat­ment then another three, seven, 10 and 28 days later.  After three days, there was no change between the placebo and antibi­otic groups. After seven days, minor improve­ment was seen with the antibi­otic group. Gar­butt said the minor change was implau­si­ble to show any major relief from the symptoms.

By day 10, about 80 per­cent of the patients in the amox­i­cillin and placebo groups con­veyed that their symp­toms were either cured or very sig­nif­i­cantly improved.  There was also no dif­fer­ence in the placebo or antibi­otic groups in the num­ber of med­ica­tions the patients used to deal with the cough, con­ges­tion, pain and fever.

Gar­butt said sinusi­tis is a nasty dis­ease with real symp­toms. Peo­ple feel mis­er­able and will miss work, she said. She also said there is no easy answer to what will be ben­e­fi­cial to treat­ing sinusi­tis espe­cially if antibi­otics are not the answer.

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