Context

Despite the controversy regarding their clinical benefit and concerns about resistance, the use of antimicrobials for rhinosinusitis (RS) accounts for one in five prescriptions for adults in the USA. However, we lack a simple diagnostic or predictive tool for determining whether acute viral RS has progressed to secondary bacterial RS, and must therefore rely on a patient's history and limited physical findings to diagnose RS. Using guidelines recommended by a small expert panel and partially funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this study attempts to answer the question of whether amoxicillin is an effective treatment for acute RS?