There may be a treatment

doi:10.1136/bmj.39409.389421.BE

BMJ 2007;335:1109 (1 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39409.389421.BE

Letters

Acute bronchiolitis

There may be a treatment

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

Although the track record for successful treatment interventionsfor acute bronchiolitis has so far been unimpressive,¹ a recenttrial using nebulised hypertonic saline holds promise.² Thisstudy involved 96 infants with a mean age of 4.7 months admittedto hospital for acute bronchiolitis, who were double blindlyrandomised to receive nebulised 3% saline or 0.9% saline. Theinfants in the hypertonic saline group had a clinically significant26% reduction in length of hospital stay (2.6 v 3.5 days). Treatmentwas well tolerated with no observed adverse side effects. Maybethere is hope!

Paul N Thiessen, clinical professor

Department of Pediatrics, University of British Columbia, BC Children's Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada

pthiessen@cw.bc.ca

Competing interests: None declared.

Bush A, Thomson AH. Acute bronchiolitis. BMJ 2007;335:1037-41. (17 November.)[Free Full Text]
Kuzik BA, Al-Qadhi SA, Kent S, Flavin MP, Hopman W, Hotte S, et al. Nebulized hypertonic saline in the treatment of viral bronchiolitis in infants. J Pediatr 2007;151:266-70.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline]