BACKGROUND We recently published preliminary evidence on the effectiveness of hypertonic saline in infants with viral bronchiolitis. OBJECTIVE To further establish the efficacy of nebulized hypertonic saline in these infants. METHODS In a continuing, second-year randomized, doubleblind controlled trial, an additional 41 infants (age 2.6 +/- 1 months) hospitalized with viral bronchiolitis we...

QUESTION Recently, a 1-year-old patient returned from admission in the hospital for bronchiolitis, and the report I received indicated that he was treated with inhaled hypertonic saline, among other treatments. Is this therapy recommended for children in the acute care setting? ANSWER Bronchiolitis, caused mostly by respiratory syncytial virus, is very common in the winter. It is the most fre...

Natural compounds still play an increasingly important role in many areas of research and development. Their structural diversity is enhanced by the synthetic potential of combinatorial chemistry. Fractionation and separation of samples obtained from nature remain time-consuming, tedious and extremely expensive even though the assays for testing these samples have become faster and more cost-ef...

The presence of systematic noise in images in high-throughput microscopy experiments can significantly impact the accuracy of downstream results. Among the most common sources of systematic noise is non-homogeneous illumination across the image field. This often adds an unacceptable level of noise, obscures true quantitative differences and precludes biological experiments that rely on accurate...

Thirty-three patients undergoing elective transurethral resection of the prostate were allocated randomly to receive either 0.9% isotonic saline 7 ml kg-1 (16 patients), or 3% hypertonic saline 7 ml kg-1 (17 patients) as a preload before spinal anaesthesia. After spinal anaesthesia, the incidence of systolic arterial pressure < 75% of control value was greater in the normal saline group than in...

INTRODUCTION Hypertonic saline (HS) was introduced in our physician-based mobile emergency care unit (MECU) in September 2006 for patients with severe traumatic brain injury and hypotension. HS has, however, rarely been used and we sought to identify barriers to its implementation. MATERIAL AND METHODS We conducted a survey based on a questionnaire administered to all 40 anaesthesiologists em...

Toads (Bufo arenarum) were exposed to pairings between immersion in a neutral saline solution (i.e., one that caused no significant variation in fluid balance), followed by immersion in a highly hypertonic saline solution (i.e., one that caused water loss). In Experiment 1, solutions were presented in a Pavlovian conditioning arrangement. A group receiving a single neutral-highly hypertonic pai...

Hypertonic saline solutions have properties that may be advantageous for resuscitation. In both animal and human studies rapid improvements in cardiovascular status occur when hypertonic saline is administered to hypovolaemic subjects and the possible side effects of hypertonic solutions have not been shown to be of clinical importance. Hypertonic saline certainly has a potential role in resusc...

Infection with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is among the universal experiences of childhood. Worldwide, by 1 year of life, half of all children have been infected with RSV and by 2 years of age, virtually all children have been infected with RSV. Unlike many viral infections, it is the prevalence, as opposed to the severity, of infection that motivates our collective focus on the optimal t...