Most Children Receive Antibiotics for Pink Eye but They’re Usually Not Needed: Experts

Many children with pink eye are prescribed antibiotics by doctors but the antibiotics are typically not necessary, according to experts. About seven out of 10 health care visits involving children with acute infectious conjunctivitis, or pink eye, ended with doctors prescribing a topical antibiotic, researchers reported in a new study. But the children, regardless of whether or not they received antibiotics, rarely returned to the doctor, “suggesting that not receiving antibiotics may not be associated with additional health care use,” Dr. Daniel Shapiro, a pediatric emergency doctor at the University of California, San Francisco, and his co-authors wrote. The researchers collected data from 2021 from a commercial claims and encounter database....