Making the "Rochester" criteria look good

Jaskiewicz and colleagues inflate the difference in the risk of serious bacterial infections (SBI) in febrile infants between their low risk and "not low risk" groups by including as an outcome variable infants who clearly have SBIS at the time of enrollment. For example, they use the presence of soft tissue infections on physical examination as both an exclusion criteria from the low risk category and as a diagnostic finding for an SBI. This seems a fundamentally flawed concept even if one considers a paronychia to be a "serious" bacterial infection.