| | What Doctors Don't Tell You: Otitis Media: Try osteopathy before grommets | |
Acute otitis media is a painful and nasty disease of the middle ear in children, which doctors usually treat with courses of antibiotics. Unfortunately, this often offers only a short-lived reprieve, if any, and the child may sometimes have to undergo surgery to have grommets inserted if the problem keeps recurring. This is traumatic for the child and parents, so both will be interested in a study that discovered osteopathy offers a long-term solution.
Children who had three or four episodes of otitis media in the previous year were either assigned to routine care (mainly antibiotics) or to routine care plus osteopathy. Those in the osteopathy group needed less medical care and suffered fewer attacks than those just receiving standard treatment.
(Source: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 2003; 157: 861-66).