Interrater agreement on whether a child’s throat was red or not was “fair” (aka…pretty bad), although agreement was significantly better when grading tonsillar hypertrophy.

In patients without a history of hypertension, use of intranasal vasoconstrictors did not significantly increase blood pressure compared to placebo.

Suturing of facial lacerations by novice physicians resulted in less cosmetically favorable repair in follow up than experienced physicians.

Practicing to find the midpoint of the cricothyroid membrane with ultrasound is a much better way to learn than by using only external landmarks and no ultrasound.

Codeine prescriptions for children after tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy substantially dropped after the FDA issued a black box warning over safety concerns.  Still, 1 in 20 children continue to inappropriately receive codeine after T&A.

For patients on antiplatelet agents with epistaxis, tranexamic acid (TXA)-soaked pledgets were far more effective than lidocaine with epinephrine-soaked pledgets at stopping bleeding within 10 minutes and were better tolerated by patients.

In patients age 5 years through adulthood with sore throat of any cause, use of a single, low-dose steroid (most often dexamethasone 10mg or 0.6mg/kg for children, max 10mg; most given orally) were twice as likely to have pain relief at 24 hours.

The diagnostic accuracy of rapid streptococcal antigen testing is such that a negative test rules out disease and should not be treated; a positive test rules it in and should be treated.

Allowing parents the option to wait and see if their child did not improve or worsened in 48 hours after the diagnosis of acute otitis media in the ED vs. filling the prescription right away resulted in a dramatic reduction in antibiotic use with little downside in this RCT.

This study says that more patients may feel better with a dose of dexamethasone for sore throat.