Abstract

A short cut review was carried out to establish whether Oseltamivir leads to faster alleviation of symptoms, fewer hospital admissions and lower mortality in adult patients with confirmed influenza B presenting to the Emergency Department. Two studies were directly relevant to the question using the described search methodology on Ovid Medline and Embase. The author, date and country of publication, patient group studied, study type, relevant outcomes, results and study weaknesses of these papers are tabulated. The clinical bottom line: there is no good evidence that oseltamivir results in quicker alleviation of symptoms, fewer hospital admissions or lower mortality in adult patients with influenza B.