Testing for Otitis Media: Diagnosis ex Machina

Abstract

From whatever standpoint — epidemiologic, clinical, or developmental — otitis media occupies a position of importance among the concerns of childhealth-care providers. In the United States otitis media is, next to the common cold, the most commonly diagnosed of childhood illnesses; with its propensity to become chronic, it is almost certainly the most prevalent.^{1 , 2} Otitis media figures prominently — often pre-eminently — 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 . . .