By: Dan WeimanSinus infections are a common medical problem around the winter months. The symptoms are familiar: throbbing headache, fever, and of course the stuffy and or runny nose. Traditionally it has been common for doctors to prescribe antibiotics to treat the infection, but recent studies have shown that antibiotics often do little to help.
Research has shown that viruses cause more than 90% of sinus infections. Because antibiotics are made to treat bacterial infections rather than viral infections, they are often powerless against a sinus infection. A recent study by the Journal of the American Medical Association seems to confirm the relative impotence of antibiotics in treating sinus infections. In the study, doctors examined 240 cases of children with sinus infections, separating the children into 4 groups. One took a combination of antibiotics and a nasal steroid; another group took just the antibiotics; another took only the steroid; and the final group took a placebo. The major finding: none of the treatments did better than the placebo.
The findings have led some doctors to advise patients to simply drink fluids and take Ibuprofen to reduce the inflammation, One statistic, however, says that 8 out of 10 patients are still prescribed antibiotics. The reason: Patients largely believe the treatment a sinus infection is antibiotics, and thus the demand for this treatment is high. Many doctors fear that this common misconception is contributing to growing bacterial resistance to antibiotics, which may hurt the ability to fight off actual bacterial infections.
The Lesson: Patients should be skeptical about using antibiotics to treat sinus infections, but it is best to follow the advice of a doctor.
