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Suppurative complications associated with acute sore throat include quinsy (peritonsillar abscess), otitis media, and sinusitis. In this prospective cohort study, researchers in the U.K. determined whether history and physical examination findings predicted suppurative complications associated with acute sore throat (duration, ≤2 weeks) in nearly 15,000 adolescents and adults who were seen in primary care.
About 1% of patients developed suppurative complications, regardless of whether they received immediate antibiotics, no antibiotics, or delayed antibiotics. In multivariate analysis, independent predictors of suppurative complications were severe tonsillar inflammation (odds ratio, 1.9) and severe earache (OR, 3.0). However, 70% of suppura…