The use of an antihistamine-decongestant in conjunction with an antinfective in treating acute otitis media

In the United States otitis media is the most commonly diagnosed of childhood illnesses, next to the common cold. Occurring at an incidence of 10 to 17 percent yearly, the disease affects 76 to 95 percent of all children at least once before age six. The disease is of such apparent ubiquity among pediatric populations that, as Paradise points out, otitis media figures preeminently in the differential diagnosis of fever, the management of pain, the prescribing of drugs, the pathogenesis of bacterial meningitis and other infections of the central nervous system, and the indications for the most frequently performed of childhood operations: