Should a physician prescribe antibiotics for strep throat without performing a test?
Ideally, a test to measure for the presence of a bacterial infection should be performed before a physician prescribes an antibiotic for strep throat. The most commonly performed test for sore throat is a rapid strep test. The results of this test are known in about ten minutes. If a rapid strep test is positive, then antibiotics are prescribed; generally, a penicillin class antibiotic (unless there is an allergy to this class of antibiotics. If so, another class is chosen). A strep culture generally requires about twenty-four hours to obtain the results. Some physicians will perform a strep culture, give the patient a prescription, but ask the patient not to fill the prescription until the results are known to be positive. A formal throat culture (with antibiotic susceptibility) requires about seventy-two hours to obtain results. A formal culture is only obtained when recurrent infections are occurring or the patient is not responding to antibiotics when a bacterial infection is suspe
