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Focusing on Where We Agree

Arch Intern Med. 2006;166:1345-1346.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The recent literature on adult pharyngitis has focused on the controversy surrounding the approach to patients with severe pharyngitis. This debate contrasts empirical treatment for patients meeting specified clinical criteria with treatment only for those with microbiologic confirmation. Despite their differences, competing guidelines (one from the American College of Physicians–American Society of Internal Medicine¹ and one from the Infectious Diseases Society of America [IDSA]²) agree on strategies for mild pharyngitis. Both guidelines use the pharyngitis score³ as an initial screen for adult patients who complain of an acute sore throat. Both guidelines recommend neither testing nor treating patients who have scores of 0 or 1 (the score is a simple sum of the following 4 factors: history of fever, lack of cough, swollen tender anterior cervical adenopathy, and tonsillar exudates). The guidelines then disagree about testing and empirical treatment for the patients with higher scores.

This difference prompted several . . . [Full Text of this Article]

AUTHOR INFORMATION
Robert M. Centor, MD; Stuart James Cohen, MD

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