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Miles Weinberger, MD
University of Iowa Iowa City

JAMA. 1977;238(11):1148-1149.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Tinkelman and Avner claim to have demonstrated that "Ephedrine is a potent bronchodilator..." In point of fact, however, they have only demonstrated what has been repeatedly shown in the medical literature, ie, that ephedrine is a weak bronchodilator. It appears that their data have been presented in such a manner as to amplify the small amount of bronchodilator effect that has been recognized for ephedrine since 1925.

First, I think we need to examine the pulmonary function data since this is the only area where the authors demonstrated any effect of ephedrine. Fig 1 and 2 in their paper present a somewhat distorted picture of what has actually happened to the pulmonary function in these patients. Instead of converting the changes in these patients' pulmonary function to a "percent changed" value, the data can be plotted directly as the mean pulmonary function data over the six hours . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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