EXPERIENCE WITH FIFTY PATIENTS TREATED WITH ARTIFICIAL VENTILATION

Experience gained during the treatment of fifty patients with respiratory failure is presented. The overall survival rate was 44 per cent, although some pathological conditions proved more amenable to treatment than others. The care of these patients involved the use of mechanical ventilators, and to obtain the best results the patients should be treated in a unit where there is a continuously high standard of nursing care and medical supervision. In such a unit problems which arise are more likely to be successfully overcome—problems of humidification, of the care of the tracheostomy, of monitoring ventilation, of preventing cross infection, and of accurate instructions for the nursing staff. In a general hospital there is a wide range of medical and surgical disease which may result in respiratory insufficiency and be successfully treated