Acta paediatrica
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Comparative Study
A clinical decision rule for management of streptococcal pharyngitis in low-resource settings.
Most of the world's children live in regions where laboratory facilities are not available. In these regions, clinical prediction rules can be useful to guide clinicians' decisions on antibiotic therapy for streptococcal pharyngitis, and to reduce routine presumptive antibiotic therapy for all pharyngitis. ⋯ The proposed three-variable clinical prediction rule for GABHS may be useful when diagnostic laboratories are not available. In this setting, the rule identified more than 90% of true cases. Compared to universal treatment of all pharyngitis, the rule will reduce antibiotic use in GABHS-negative cases by about 40%.