BMJ  2004;329:625 (11 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7466.625

Letter

Predicting bacterial cause in infectious conjunctivitis

"History of conjunctivitis" needs clarifying

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

EDITOR—The interesting and potentially valuable study reported by Rietveld et al discusses the prediction of the bacterial cause of infectious conjunctivitis.1 But can the authors please clarify what they mean by a "history of conjunctivitis"?1 Do they mean a history of conjunctivitis, recent injected conjunctivae, or what? What question were patients asked—surely they did not ask, "Do you have a history of conjunctivitis?" or its Dutch equivalent?

Anthony N Glaser, private practice of family medicine

Summerville, SC 29483, USA tonyglaser@mindspring.com

Competing interests: None declared.

  1. Rietveld RP, ter Riet G, Bindels PJE, Sloos JH, van Weert HCPM. Predicting bacterial cause in infectious conjunctivitis: cohort study on informativeness of combinations of signs and symptoms. BMJ 2004;329: 206-10. (24 July.)[Abstract/Free Full Text]

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Relevant Article

Predicting bacterial cause in infectious conjunctivitis: cohort study on informativeness of combinations of signs and symptoms
Remco P Rietveld, Gerben ter Riet, Patrick J E Bindels, Jacobus H Sloos, and Henk C P M van Weert
BMJ 2004 329: 206-210. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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