This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Ziad E. Deeb, MD
Georgetown University Hospital Washington, DC

JAMA. 1995;273(12):920.

	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.

—In their Brief Report on acute epiglottitis in adults,¹ Dr Frantz and colleagues conclude that stridor and sitting erect were the factors highly associated with airway intervention. I hope your readers did not draw the wrong conclusions regarding the proper timing of airway intervention in patients with acute epiglottitis or supraglottitis.

Most clinicians recognize that in a developing acute obstructive laryngitis, stridor indicates an advanced stage of the process, whether it involves the supraglottic or infraglottic regions of the larynx.² It is also a physiological fact that tachycardia is an earlier indicator of airway compromise and hypoxemia than is the respiratory rate. It explains why, in the early phases of the inflammation, patients present with a very rapid pulse rate^3,4 but without a change in the respiratory rate. Based both on my review of the medical records of 12 adults from around the United . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?