Patient characteristics
After assessing for eligibility, 40 patients treated with adjuvant
dexamethasone and evaluated on the response of sore throat at 24 hours,
met the inclusion criteria. Additionally, 21 patients had Chest X-rays
and 16 had their complete blood count determined. The baseline
characteristics of patients are shown in Table 1. Because of the present
study was conducted in a military hospital, all 40 patients were men and
their mean age was 21.3 years (standard deviation [SD], ± 1.4
years). Patients visited the hospital a mean of 3.6 days (SD, ± 1.2
days) after symptom onset. The mean score of NRS for sore throat at
admission was 6.9 (SD, ± 1.9). The most common symptom was febrile
sensation (95.0%) with mean 38.0 ℃ (SD, ± 0.9). Most patients had more
than a grade 3 tonsillar swelling (67.5%) and tonsillar exudate
(75.0%). Of the 40 patients, 29 had a modified Centor score of 2 or 3
(72.5%). Almost every patient received antibiotics (95.0%); 26 had
immediate antibiotics therapy (66.7%) and 13 had delayed antibiotics
therapy (33.3%) due to the absence of the rapid streptococcal antigen
test. None of the 21 patients (52.5%) who had a chest X-ray at
admission presented with pneumonia.