1 Department of Pediatrics, Room N8W68, University of Maryland Hospital, 22 S Green St, Baltimore, MD 21201
In Reply.
We agree with Ris' comments on the dependability of a single cervical culture for gonorrhea, and therefore it is possible that some of the 12 patients with pharyngeal gonorrhea alone had cervical infection as well. An alternative to taking a second cervical culture prior to treatment would be to take a cervical culture following treatment to ensure cure.
Regarding the prevalance of rectal gonorrhea in this study population,1 20% of the patients with gonorrhea had rectal gonorrhea and 19% had pharyngeal gonorrhea (our figure 1).