Acute mastoiditis in an Italian pediatric tertiary medical center: a 15 - year retrospective study

Acute mastoiditis is the main suppurative complication of acute otitis media. Its incidence ranges from 1.2 to 4.2/100.000 children/year and a rise has been reported in the last years. There are controversial data regarding risk factors for mastoiditis and its complications. to evaluate demographics and clinical characteristics of children with acute mastoiditis and to identify possible risk factors for complications. We retrospectively reviewed medical charts of all the children aged 1 month-14 years admitted to our Paediatric Emergency Department from January 2002 to December 2016. One hundred forty-seven cases (97 males and 50 females) were included in the analysis, mean age was 4.8 ± 3.6 years and 28.2% of the patients were younger than 2 years. We found an increasing number of mastoiditis per year during the last 3 years of the study. Children younger than 2 years were less treated with antibiotics for acute otitis media or treated for a shorter period (p