Treatment
Studies of nebulized hypertonic saline have shown that the "use of nebulized 3% HS is a safe, inexpensive, and effective treatment for infants hospitalized with moderately severe viral bronchiolitis" where "respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) accounts for the majority of viral bronchiolitis cases". One study noted a 26% reduction in length of stay: 2.6 ± 1.9 days, compared with 3.5 ± 2.9 days in the untreated group (p=0.05).
Supportive care includes fluids and oxygen until the illness runs its course. Salbutamol may be used in an attempt to relieve any bronchospasm if present. Increased airflow, humidified and delivered via nasal cannula, may be supplied in order to reduce the effort required for respiration. Adrenaline, bronchodilators, steroids, and ribavirin confer "no real benefit".
Read more about this topic: Human Respiratory Syncytial Virus
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, “Go to sleep by yourselves.” And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)