Word: bulbar
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Last week, the Harvard School of Public Health, which in 1929 developed the Drinker respirator (iron lung) for victims of spinal polio, announced that a device based on Dr. Sarnoff's theory is now helping to save the lives of victims of bulbar polio...
...this form of the disease, rarer but far deadlier than spinal polio, the virus attacks the bulb or brain stem. The iron lung often will not work on bulbar polio because the patient's breathing is jerky. with an irregular rhythm; his intake and release of air cannot be synchronized with the iron lung's regular beat. But bulbar polio has one feature which fitted in well with Dr. Sarnoff's theory: it generally leaves the phrenic nerve undamaged...
...first human patients treated with the electrophrenic respirator was nine-year-old Bruce Plater, of Ottawa, Ont., who developed bulbar polio while on vacation in New England. In July, at Children's Hospital in Boston, Bruce's breathing was electrically controlled for six days before the disease receded. Six machines are now ready for use. By New Year's they will be generally available, at about $275 each...
Besides its value in bulbar polio, the electrophrenic respirator will be just as useful, its developers believe, in treating cases of electrocution, drowning, brain tumors and overdoses of sleeping pills...
Because of this peculiarity of suspending the natural breathing, Dr. Whittenberger explained, the electrophrenic method is superior to the "Iron lung" in the treatment of the bulbar variation of the disease. The iron lung is unable to cope with the irregular breathing in cases of bulbar poliomyelitis...