POEM: Children with uncomplicated UTIs may do well with short courses of antibiotics, but the quality of the evidence is poor

doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7373.0/h

BMJ 2002;325:0 ( 16 November )

Filler

POEM

Children with uncomplicated UTIs may do well with short courses of antibiotics, but the quality of the evidence is poor

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Clinical question Are short courses of antibiotics effective in the treatment of urinary tract infections (UTIs) inchildren?

Synopsis The authors systematically searched Medline, Embase, and other sources for randomised and quasi-randomisedtrials that compared short course and standard duration antibioticsin the treatment of urinary tract infections in children aged3 months to 18 years. They did not look for unpublished studies,but they assessed the quality of the 10 studies that were included.They found important problems in the reporting of the includedstudies. Only two reported concealed allocation; three had morethan 20% of patients lost to follow up; only one was blinded;and none stated if the outcome assessments were blinded or ifthey used an intention to treat analysis. In other words, thereporting of the methods was poor. Oh, by the way, they foundno overall difference inoutcomes.