ACUTE LARYNGOTRACHEOBRONCHITIS: Further Studies on Treatment

Abstract

DURING recent years many excellent articles describing the treatment of this disease have appeared in the literature. Notable contributions have been made by Richards,¹Jackson and Jackson,²Holinger,³Brennemann and associates,⁴Galloway,⁵Font,⁶Brighton,⁷Orton and associates,⁸Lejeune and Bayou,⁹Graebner,¹⁰McCaskey,¹¹Gittins,¹²Neffson,¹³Walsh,¹⁴MacCready,¹⁵Baum¹⁶and others. There is still lack of agreement regarding the best methods of treatment. Ten years ago the mortality of this disease was said to be 70 per cent.²Since that time succeeding articles have reported gradually decreasing mortality rates. During the past five years I have treated 52 consecutive patients with this disease. There were no deaths in this series, which included 15 patients who required tracheotomy. My purpose in presenting this paper is to analyze the methods of treatment which have made possible this reduction in mortality rate. <h3>CLINICAL PICTURE </h3> Patients in this series all had severe progressive laryngeal obstruction and