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Infants with bronchiolitis may benefit more from albuterol

May 16, 2007

Bronchiolitis, a wheezing much like asthma in adults, is responsible for many hospital admissions of infants. It is the commonest cause of hospital admission in this age group. There are two drugs in general use to treat this condition, epinephrine and albuterol, and there is some controversy and passion involved in the choice of medication. In a paper to be presented at the 2007 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) Annual Meeting, a double-blind randomized clinical trial involving over 700 infants over a three year period showed a clear advantage for albuterol in successful discharges from the Emergency Department.

Although many smaller studies have shown either no difference or an advantage to epinephrine, this surprising result of a small but real advantage in using albuterol may force physicians to reassess their treatment choices. Principal Investigaor, Paul Walsh, MD, originally preferred epinephrine prior to conducting this study. The other investigators were Kemedy McQuillan MD, John Caldwel Pharm Dl and Stephen J Rothenberg PhD.

The presentation is entitled "A Double Blind Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Nebulized Epinephrine And Albuterol In The Emergency Department Treatment Of Bronchiolitis" by Paul Walsh MD, of the Kern Medical Center, Bakersfield & David Geffen School of Medicine at the UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. This paper will be presented at the 2007 SAEM Annual Meeting, May 16-19, 2007, Chicago, IL on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007, in the Plenary session beginning at 1:00 PM in Sheraton 4 & 5 of the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. Abstracts of the papers presented are published in Volume 14, Issue 5S, the May 2007 supplement of the official journal of the SAEM, Academic Emergency Medicine.

Elsevier Health Sciences