Antibiotics for sore throat

Background: Sore throat is a common reason for people to present for medical care. Although it remits spontaneously, primary care doctors commonly prescribe antibiotics for it. Objectives: To assess the benefits of antibiotics for sore throat for patients in primary care settings. Search methods: We searched CENTRAL 2013, Issue 6, MEDLINE (January 1966 to July week 1, 2013) and EMBASE (January 1990 to July 2013). Selection criteria: Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi‐RCTs of antibiotics versus control assessing typical sore throat symptoms or complications. Data collection and analysis: Two review authors independently screened studies for inclusion and extracted data. We resolved differences in opinion by discussion. We contacted trial authors from three studies for additional information. Main results: We included 27 trials with 12,835 cases of sore throat. We did not identify any new trials in this 2013 update. 1. Symptoms - Throat soreness and fever were reduced by about half by using antibiotics. The greatest difference was seen at day three. The number needed to treat to benefit (NNTB) to prevent one sore throat at day three was less than six; at week one it was 21. 2. Non‐suppurative complications - The trend was antibiotics protecting against acute glomerulonephritis but there were too few cases to be sure. Several studies found antibiotics reduced acute rheumatic fever by more than two‐thirds within one month (risk ratio (RR) 0.27; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.12 to 0.60). 3. Suppurative complications - Antibiotics reduced the incidence of acute otitis media within 14 days (RR 0.30; 95% CI 0.15 to 0.58); acute sinusitis within 14 days (RR 0.48; 95% CI 0.08 to 2.76); and quinsy within two months (RR 0.15; 95% CI 0.05 to 0.47) compared to those taking placebo. 4. Subgroup analyses of symptom reduction - Antibiotics were more effective against symptoms at day three (RR 0.58; 95% CI 0.48 to 0.71) if throat swabs were positive for Streptococcus, compared to RR 0.78; 95% CI 0.63 to 0.97 if negative. Similarly at week one the RR was 0.29 (95% CI 0.12 to 0.70) for positive and 0.73 (95% CI 0.50 to 1.07) for negative Streptococcus swabs. Authors' conclusions: Antibiotics confer relative benefits in the treatment of sore throat. However, the absolute benefits are modest. Protecting sore throat sufferers against suppurative and non‐suppurative complications in high‐income countries requires treating many with antibiotics for one to benefit. This NNTB may be lower in low‐income countries. Antibiotics shorten the duration of symptoms by about 16 hours overall.Griffith Health, School of MedicineFull Tex

A New Custodian for a Realistic Higgsless Model

We present an example of a realistic Higgsless model that makes use of alternative $SU(2)_R$ assignments for the top and bottom quarks recently proposed by Agashe et al. which results in an enhanced custodial symmetry. Using these new representat ions reduces the deviations in the $Zb_\ell\bar{b}_\ell$ coupling to $\sim 4$ for a wide range of parameters, while this remaining correction can also be eliminated by varying the localization parameter (bulk mass) for $b_r$.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Educational interventions to improve people's understanding of key concepts in assessing the effects of health interventions: a systematic review

Abstract Background Health information is readily accessible but is of variable quality. General knowledge about how to assess whether claims about health interventions are trustworthy is not common, so people’s health decisions can be ill-informed, unnecessarily costly and even unsafe. This review aims to identify and evaluate studies of educational interventions designed to improve people’s understanding of key concepts for evaluating claims about the effects of health interventions. Methods/Design We searched multiple electronic databases and sources of grey literature. Inclusion criteria included all study types that included a comparison, any participants (except health professionals or health professional students) and educational interventions aimed at improving people’s understanding of one or more of the key concepts considered necessary for assessing health intervention claims. Knowledge and/or understanding of concepts or skills relevant to evaluating health information were our primary outcome measures. Secondary outcomes included behaviour, confidence, attitude and satisfaction with the educational interventions. Two authors independently screened search results, assessed study eligibility and risk of bias and extracted data. Results were summarised using descriptive synthesis. Results Among 24 eligible studies, 14 were randomised trials and 10 used other study designs. There was heterogeneity across study participants, settings and educational intervention type, content and delivery. The risk of bias was high in at least one domain for all randomised studies. Most studies measured outcomes immediately after the educational intervention, with few measuring later. In most of the comparisons, measures of knowledge and skills were better among those who had received educational interventions than among controls, and some of these differences were statistically significant. The effects on secondary outcomes were inconsistent. Conclusions Educational interventions to improve people’s understanding of key concepts for evaluating health intervention claims can improve people’s knowledge and skills, at least in the short term. Effects on confidence, attitude and behaviour are uncertain. Many of the studies were at moderate or greater risk of bias. Improvements in study quality, consistency of outcome measures and measures of longer-term effects are needed to improve confidence in estimates of the effects of educational interventions to improve people’s understanding of key concepts for evaluating health intervention claims. Systematic review registration PROSPERO CRD4201603310

Barriers Encountered by Nurses and Nursing Assistants that Prevent Purposeful Rounding

Purpose: The aim of the study was to identify barriers encountered by registered nurses (RNs) and nursing assistants (NAs) that prevent purposeful (hourly) rounding. Background: The literature has shown that purposeful rounding improves patient outcomes and safety. However, few studies show the barriers encountered by nursing staff that hinder the purposeful rounding process. Methods: A pre-post test design was implemented on a 25-bed oncology, urology medical surgical unit with a staff of 38 RNs, 9 NAs, and 4 Unit Secretaries (US). A pre-implementation needs assessment survey was completed by 55% (21/38) of RNs, 33% (3/9) of NAs, and 100% (4/4) of US. It was followed by an intervention in the form of in-services during huddles and a purposeful rounding checklist. A post-intervention survey was completed by 29% (11/38) of RNs, 56% (5/9) of NAs, and 25% (1/4) of US to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. Results: The pre-intervention survey revealed that 86% (18/21) of RNs, 100% (3/3) of NAs, and 100% (4/4) of US believed better RN-NA communication was needed to do purposeful rounding. The post-intervention survey found that 64% (7/11) of RNs and 60% (3/5) of NAs were more likely to communicate with their RN/NA partner about the patient’s comfort and safety needs immediately after a purposeful round. Recommendations: It is recommended that RN and NA unit champions be designated to role model communication between RNs and NAs during purposeful rounds and that staff use the purposeful rounding checklist in order to improve teamwork and patient car

The Minimal Set of Electroweak Precision Parameters

We present a simple method for analyzing the impact of precision electroweak data above and below the Z-peak on flavour-conserving heavy new physics. We find that experiments have probed about ten combinations of new physics effects, which to a good approximation can be condensed into the effective oblique parameters Shat, That, Uhat, V, X, W, Y (we prove positivity constraints W, Y >= 0) and three combinations of quark couplings (including a distinct parameter for the bottom). We apply our method to generic extra Z' vectors.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figure

Interventions to facilitate shared decision making to address antibiotic use for acute respiratory infections in primary care

Background: Shared decision making is an important component of patient-centred care. It is a set of communication and evidence-based practice skills that elicits patients' expectations, clarifies any misperceptions and discusses the best available evidence for benefits and harms of treatment. Acute respiratory infections (ARIs) are one of the most common reasons for consulting in primary care and obtaining prescriptions for antibiotics. However, antibiotics offer few benefits for ARIs, and their excessive use contributes to antibiotic resistance - an evolving public health crisis. Greater explicit consideration of the benefit-harm trade-off within shared decision making may reduce antibiotic prescribing for ARIs in primary care. Objectives: To assess whether interventions that aim to facilitate shared decision making increase or reduce antibiotic prescribing for ARIs in primary care. Search methods: We searched CENTRAL (2014, Issue 11), MEDLINE (1946 to November week 3, 2014), EMBASE (2010 to December 2014) and Web of Science (1985 to December 2014). We searched for other published, unpublished or ongoing trials by searching bibliographies of published articles, personal communication with key trial authors and content experts, and by searching trial registries at the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization. Selection criteria: Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) (individual level or cluster-randomised), which evaluated the effectiveness of interventions that promote shared decision making (as the focus or a component of the intervention) about antibiotic prescribing for ARIs in primary care. Data collection and analysis: Two review authors independently extracted and collected data. Antibiotic prescribing was the primary outcome, and secondary outcomes included clinically important adverse endpoints (e.g. re-consultations, hospital admissions, mortality) and process measures (e.g. patient satisfaction). We assessed the risk of bias of all included trials and the quality of evidence. We contacted trial authors to obtain missing information where available. Main results: We identified 10 published reports of nine original RCTs (one report was a long-term follow-up of the original trial) in over 1100 primary care doctors and around 492,000 patients. The main risk of bias came from participants in most studies knowing whether they had received the intervention or not, and we downgraded the rating of the quality of evidence because of this. We meta-analysed data using a random-effects model on the primary and key secondary outcomes and formally assessed heterogeneity. Remaining outcomes are presented narratively. There is moderate quality evidence that interventions that aim to facilitate shared decision making reduce antibiotic use for ARIs in primary care (immediately after or within six weeks of the consultation), compared with usual care, from 47% to 29%: risk ratio (RR) 0.61, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.55 to 0.68. Reduction in antibiotic prescribing occurred without an increase in patient-initiated re-consultations (RR 0.87, 95% CI 0.74 to 1.03, moderate quality evidence) or a decrease in patient satisfaction with the consultation (OR 0.86, 95% CI 0.57 to 1.30, low quality evidence). There were insufficient data to assess the effects of the intervention on sustained reduction in antibiotic prescribing, adverse clinical outcomes (such as hospital admission, incidence of pneumonia and mortality), or measures of patient and caregiver involvement in shared decision making (such as satisfaction with the consultation; regret or conflict with the decision made; or treatment compliance following the decision). No studies assessed antibiotic resistance in colonising or infective organisms. Authors' conclusions: Interventions that aim to facilitate shared decision making reduce antibiotic prescribing in primary care in the short term. Effects on longer-term rates of prescribing are uncertain and more evidence is needed to determine how any sustained reduction in antibiotic prescribing affects hospital admission, pneumonia and death