Showing papers in "Illinois medical journal in 1950"

Pulmonary tuberculosis in children treated with streptomycin.

Abstract: The use of streptomycin in the treatment of primary progressive tuberculosis has uniformly lessened and in most cases obliterated the toxic manifestations of the disease, and has reversed the general downward clinical course of the disease in a series of 21 cases. The physical findings improved and decreased roentgenologic changes followed the clinical and physical improvement. Conversion of sputum from positive to negative findings was completed in four to five months in 89% of primary progressive lesions. The group of three cases with the adult type of pulmonary tuberculosis was too small to be statistically significant, but from observations of these children it is believed that the results were similar to cases of chronic pulmonary tuberculosis in adults treated with streptomycin in this and other institutions. Two of these cases were only temporarily improved. One of these died and the other is now in a terminal stage. The third child is awaiting surgery. Streptomycin therapy should not be considered a cure-all; its use is still in the experimental stage and a larger number of cases will have to be observed over a longer period of time.