Word: bulbar
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...meant to replace the iron lung because it is mainly effective against only one type of polio--bulbar polio. This variety of the disease attacks the bulb at the base of the skull where the nerve center is located. The EPR takes over for the disturbed nerve center and substitutes its own steady breathing impulses for the weak, irregular ones from the brain...
...patients were able to leave the hospital after only seven to 14 days, some to go home, others to an orthopedic hospital where the retraining of impaired muscles could begin sooner. Dr. Smith does not recommend giving the drug to patients who have the severe forms of bulbar or bulbospinal poliomyelitis, or to those in iron lungs...
...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...