[Immunologic emergency situations].

A three-month-old boy and an eight-month-old boy died from accidental positional asphyxia and hanging, respectively, after being placed to sleep unsupervised in stroller-prams. Both infants had moved down towards the fronts of the stroller-prams. The younger infant fell out when the footplate collapsed and he was found hanging from a metal bar on the side. The older infant had partly slipped through the front and was suspended with his head and arms within the stroller-pram and with his face pushed firmly into the mattress by a horizontal metal bar. Stroller-prams are a potentially dangerous sleeping environment unless infants are closely supervised, gaps in the front of stroller-prams closed and upright footplates stabilised.

Airway Obstruction↗

PubMed1996

Cardiorespiratory response to bicuculline during resistive loaded breathing in anesthetized rabbits.

We hypothesized that hypoventilation induced by resistive loaded breathing may result in part from an increase in gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentration in the central nervous system. Accordingly, ventilatory depression should be minimized by GABA receptor blockade. The effects of subseizure doses of the GABAA receptor antagonist bicuculline on the cardiorespiratory variables and cortical activities were evaluated in two groups of urethane anesthetized rabbits, breathing either through an inspiratory resistive load (IRL) or not. Bicuculline induced cardiorespiratory changes which consisted mainly of an augmented respiratory rate, through shortening of expiratory duration, and of bradycardia. Bicuculline effects did not significantly differ between both groups and were accompanied by high amplitude delta rhythmic cortical activities. These data show that GABAA receptors may exert a tonic depressive effect on the respiratory circuit and suggest that endogenous GABA release is not augmented by an acute increase in the work of breathing.

Airway Obstruction↗