Pediatric otitis media

The pediatric patients with routine, easiest-to-treat otitis media utilize 2.1 office visits during the course of a PTE. This patient group also received 0.13 tests, 0.14 laboratory and pathology services, and 0.05 medical/surgical procedures during the course of a PTE. Though 29.2% of these patients did not produce a claim for prescription drug therapy, this patient group received at least 1.53 prescriptions per PTEs. One prescription drug group was used in 39.8% of all PTEs. Of the PTEs treated with a single drug group, at least 56.4% were treated with amoxicillin. Two prescription drug groups were used in 18.1% of the PTEs. The prescribing patterns of physicians using two drug groups demonstrate a wide variety of switching patterns, some of which may have cost-of-care implications. Though surgical procedures are seldom utilized in SOI-1, approximately one-half of SOI-2 PTEs undergo some type of surgical procedure. The most common surgical procedure was myringotomy with the PE-TM tubes, which represents 82% of procedures performed on SOI-2 patients. The major cost drivers in the treatment of otitis media are clinical visits and antimicrobial drugs.