| Abstract: | Experience gained during the treatment of fifty patients withrespiratory failure is presented. The overall survival ratewas 44 per cent, although some pathological conditions provedmore amenable to treatment than others. The care of these patientsinvolved the use of mechanical ventilators, and to obtain thebest results the patients should be treated in a unit wherethere is a continuously high standard of nursing care and medicalsupervision. In such a unit problems which arise are more likelyto be successfully overcome—problems of humidification,of the care of the tracheostomy, of monitoring ventilation,of preventing cross infection, and of accurate instructionsfor the nursing staff. In a general hospital there is a widerange of medical and surgical disease which may result in respiratoryinsufficiency and be successfully treated
*The Royal Marsden Hospital, London |
