Can any AB experts advise?

[gnu]

DD (9 months) has just returned from the GP with a diagnosis of severe tonsilitis and a course of ABs called erythroped. I've never heard of this AB but apparently its a penicillin alternative.

We asked the GP to look in her ears to check for a possible ear infection but he said there was no point as the AB would fight this in any event.

My only concern is that last time we took DD to the same GP with a mild fever he diagnosed tonsilitis, didn't look in her ears, and prescribed penicillin. A few days later we took her screaming in pain to the out-of-hours GP who diagnosed an ear infection and told us to stop penicillin as this wouldn't work against the infection and instead prescribed amoxicillin (which seemed to help).

We're not going to find ourselves in this situation again are we?

Ok gnu just had a quick chat with DH (who is a GP) he says GP should have looked in her ears - if nothing else it would have reassured you but he didn't. What we do know is that she def has tonsilitis and she on the correct treatment, tonsilitis often gives referred pain to the ear and it is highly unlikely that she has both an ear and a throat infection. Evidence also suggests that ab's used for ear infections reduce the time your child is unwell by about 12 hours. The best treatment is regular analgesia (which I am sure you doing anyway for her throat)

Hope that makes sense and I hope that your DD gets better.

Thanks, that's great. I think perhaps this Gp doesn't like the infant-wrestling that ear checks involve

The thing I don't know, which is more complex, is whether he was right that the erythroped would be effective against an ear infection if she had one or if one began shortly afterwards like last time. This wasn't the case with penicillin he prescribed then and erythroped is described as a penicillin alternative, hence my concern.

don't reslly know the answer to that as I have never heard of that drug and DH has gone for a nap (what a life!!) He just said that for an ear infection he wouldn't always prescribe AB's in the first place. Can ask him again when he gets up though.

18/20 children with ear infections will get better just as quickly with or without ABs but if there's pain and a temp and redness in BOTH ears then ABs may be appropriate (so gp should have looked)

that should of course have read "really know"

OK, well hopefully the AB will help her throat and she'll not have an ear infection like last time. I guess I just wanted to avoid having two courses of different ABs where one may have been enough. Thanks for the advice.

My dd1 was prescribed erythroped a number of times for tonsil/ear/sinus infections as she couldn't take the more common ab's. Erythroped seemed to work as well as penicillin, which she always threw up.

I'm allergic to penicillin so always have erythromycin which is probably the generic ingredient of erythroped. As for Penicillin / amoxicllin I thought amox. was a branded penicillin? I could be wrong but I used to work as a dispenser many years ago and seem to remember that being the case.