Watchful Waiting for Children With Acute Otitis Media: Frequency of Use and Outcomes in Clinical Practice

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Among 140 579 pediatric acute otitis media (AOM) visits, watchful waiting was used in 15.6% of cases and was associated with similarly low rates of treatment failure and adverse events as immediate antibiotics. Scale up of watchful waiting may be an important approach to reduce unnecessary antibiotic exposure for AOM.