THE ETIOLOGIC DIAGNOSIS OF PNEUMONIA IN CHILDREN BY RAPID TYPING OF NASAL CULTURES

Advances in the treatment of pneumonia both with serum and with drugs have increased the importance of the etiologic diagnosis. In children, attempts to circumvent delay due to lack of sputum by obtaining tracheal specimens have been made by Bullowa¹ and by Krahulik, Rudomanski and Cunningham.²

Beebe,³ Kneeland⁴ and Webster and Hughes⁵ reported that in respiratory infections in children the respiratory pathogens, e. g. pneumococcus, influenza bacillus and hemolytic streptococcus, appear in cultures from the nasal passages. In the middle fossae of the nose in cases of lobar pneumonia, Felty and Heatley⁶ described the presence of pneumococci which corresponded to the type found in the sputum. Baker⁷ found that in early pneumonia in children the highly parasitic pneumococcus type I could be quickly recovered from nasal swabs through mouse inoculation. These observations led us to explore the possibility of rapid typing of pneumonia