A case report is presented demonstrating the beneficial beta2 stimulating effect of halothane in a patient with status asthmaticus unresponsive to adequate conventional therapy. Twenty-four hours after the commencement of therapy, 0.5 per cent of 1.0 per cent halothane was administered for one hour with sustained reductions in peak inspiratory airway pressure and increases in dynamic and static...

OBJECTIVES Childhood obesity contributes to a wide array of medical conditions, including asthma. There is also increasing evidence in adult patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) that obesity contributes to increased morbidity and to a prolonged length of stay. We hypothesized that obesity is associated with the need for increased duration of therapy in children admitted to the ICU...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To describe the prognostic factors, clinical course, and outcome of patients with status asthmaticus treated in a medical ICU (MICU). DESIGN Analysis of prospective data. SETTING A multidisciplinary MICU of an inner-city university hospital. PATIENTS We collected data on 132 hospital admissions of 89 patients with status asthmaticus treated in our MICU from August 1995 th...

We report a case of fracture of the cricoid cartilage associated with cricoid pressure during rapid sequence tracheal intubation in a patient with status asthmaticus. This patient had a history of laryngeal trauma 48 yr previously. Fracture of the cricoid cartilage has not been reported previously after cricoid pressure.

a third status Editor, As sometimes happens to asthmatic and epileptic patients, every now and then, a well controlled hypertensive patient also enters, for no apparent reason, a refractory hypertensive state that would demand urgent treatment with much higher doses of his usual medications and often with different and more powerful drugs to reverse it. In line with the nomenclature used for th...