Most children experience at least one episode by the time they are seven years old.
Acute otitis media is one of the most common reasons for prescribing antibiotics, but the value of prescribing antibiotics is increasingly questioned, especially now with concerns about increasing antibiotic resistance. Despite this, there are often pressures to prescribe antibiotics and reasons why such prescribing may be appropriate. One question which then arises is whether to go for a course of antibiotics over 10 days or so, or whether a short course of five days or less may be equally efficacious. Searching was thorough, and process issues were well addressed. The meta-analysis used Cochrane review methods, reporting odds ratios with no individual trial information, making it difficult to plot results or describe actual rates of success or failure, and Bandolier has a problem with odds ratios anyway.