Exclusively oral antibiotic therapy for Brodie's abscess in a pediatric patient

Abstract

Brodie's abscess is a bone infection which usually presents as a subacute course. Surgical debridement followed by intravenous antibiotics has been the classical therapeutical approach. This report describes a case of a 12-year-old boy who presented with clinical, analytical, and radiological features of subacute osteomyelitis affecting distal tibia, and who was successfully managed with a prolonged course of exclusively oral antibiotics avoiding a surgical procedure. An exclusively oral antibiotherapy approach for Brodie's abscess could provide comparable success rates to surgical debridement followed by intravenous antibiotics in selected pediatric patients.