Recent advances in management of bronchiolitis.
BACKGROUND
Bronchiolitis is one of the major causes for hospital admissions in infants. Managing bronchiolitis, both in the outpatient and inpatient setting remains a challenge to the treating pediatrician. The effectiveness of various interventions used for infants with bronchiolitis remains unclear.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the evidence supporting the use of currently available treatment and preventive strategies for infants with bronchiolitis and to provide practical guidelines to the practitioners managing children with bronchiolitis.


METHODS
A search of articles published on bronchiolitis was performed using PubMed. The areas of focus were diagnosis, treatment and prevention of bronchiolitis in children. Relevant information was extracted from English language studies published over the last 20 years. In addition, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was searched.


CONCLUSIONS
Supportive care, comprising of taking care of oxygenation and hydration, remains the corner-stone of therapy in bronchiolitis. Pulse oximetry helps in guiding the need for oxygen administration. Several recent evidence-based reviews have suggested that bronchodilators or corticosteroids lack efficacy in bronchiolitis and should not be routinely used. A number of other novel therapies (such as nebulized hypertonic saline, heliox, CPAP, montelukast, surfactant, and inhaled furosemide) have been evaluated in clinical trials, and although most of them did not show any beneficial results, some like hypertonic saline, surfactant, CPAP have shown promising results.
Department of Pediatrics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India. Correspondence to: Dr SK Kabra, Department of Pediatrics, AIIMS, New Delhi. skkabra@hotmail.com.
Nishant
N
Verma
Rakesh
R
Lodha
S K
SK
Kabra
D001988:Bronchiolitis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn