Believe it or not very few middle ear infections actually need antibiotics. You might say-hey it’s an infection, isn’t it? So antibiotics treat infections, right?

Yes, antibiotics do treat infections but only bacterial infections. You could give antibiotics to a patient with a middle ear infections and that patient will undoubutedly get better. Problem is that patient would have gotten better anyway without antibiotics.

About 95% of middle ear infections are caused by viruses. In other words, if you treat 100 patients with antibiotics, you will have treated 95 of those individuals needlessly.

And what’s the problem with antibiotics anyways?

In the first place your wallet will be a little thicker without the added unneeded expense. You won’t kill off most of the billions and billions of ‘good’ bacteria your body harbors. You won’t get diarrhea. You won’t develop super resistant bacteria and when you really need an antibiotic then that antibiotic will actually work. Finally, you won’t have any other side effects since you didn’t take any antibiotics.

If that doesn’t convince you, then what about the other poor schmucks who are drinking the water contaminated by all those antibiotics flushed down the toilet that end up in the ground water?

For almost all patients over 2 try instead some Tylenol and or Ibuprofen. If you notice some discharge from your ear, that means that the drum is probably perforated. In that case you would need antibiotics.

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