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.