Pharyngeal Gonorrhea
1 Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine, The Children's Hospital Medical Center, Boston, MA 02115
To the Editor.
The article "Screening for Pharyngeal Gonorrhea in the Urban Teenager"1 is clearly of value to pediatricians. However, I believe the final conclusion of the paper, which advocates routine culture for pharyngeal gonorrhea "whenever genital cultures are collected," is premature. As a single culture for gonorrhea is currently $18 in our laboratory, triplicate screening cultures of the pharynx, rectum, and cervix would be a financial burden to most asymptomatic adolescents in a low-risk setting (asymptomatic rate 1% to 2%).




