Proper diagnosis of group A streptococcal pharyngitis that may cause chronic diseases in childhood is not easy because its signs and symptoms would be nonspecific. Because results of classical throat culture delays for one to two days, we'd like to determine whether early antibiotics would be introduced with according to the clinical score system. This study was undertaken to evaluate of clinical usefulness of scoring system based on the clinical and laboratory findings.

From Jan. 1998 to Dec. 2000, 10 clinical items based on modified 9 items by Breese in 1977 were checked in patients with pharyngitis who visited on outpatients clinic of pediatrics, Kyunghee University Hospital. We compared the results of throat culture with the points of clinical score system.

Out of 45 cases, the positive culture for Group A Streptococcus was 20 and negative culture was 25. When we applied more than 30 points of score, which correspond to 70 percentile of study population, the sensitivity and specificity were 35.0% and 96.0%, respectively.

Although sensitivity was relatively low this scoring system, but the high specificity may be useful diagnostic tool in the areas where the rate of isolation of Group A Streptococcus is low.