Abstract
Respiratory failure accompanied by voluminous bronchial pulmonary secretions is dangerous. This can also be the cause of dyspnea attack every morning. To solve this problem daily patterns of bronchial pulmonary secretion were studied. A total of 21 cases were composed of 11 men and 10 women, with an average age of 56.6 (ranging from 32 to 76). There were 8 cases of sinobronchitis, 4 cases of diffuse panbronchiolitis, 3 cases of interstitial pneumonia and one case of bronchial asthma. Sixteen of the 21 cases (76%) had respiratory failure.
They were under close observation for an average of 172.2 days (from 5 days to 420 days). The conclusions were as follows;
1) The daily patterns of bronchopulmonary secretion were classified into 5 types, i. e. i) early morning type, ii) afternoon type, iii) continuous type, iv) diphasic type, v) nocturnal type.
2) The daily bronchial pulmonary secretion patterns were constant according to the individual not according to the disease.
3) The bronchial pulmonary secretion pattern remained constant despite changes in volume.
4) Steroid therapy induced a decrease of secretions in 50% of all cases but did not alter daily patterns.
