The Exposure of Health Care Workers to Ribavirin Aerosol

To the Editor.—  We have several questions about the interesting letter "Exposure of Health Care Workers to Ribavirin Aerosol."¹ The authors suggest that a University of California at San Francisco-appointed task force reached conclusions dramatically modifying the treatment of hospitalized patients with respiratory syncytial virus infections. This is a very important decision, and the data on which it is made should be available.It is unclear whether the task force recommendations were made for a specific hospital or for all hospitals. Either way, restricting ribavirin aerosol to administration via an endotracheal tube is of great concern. Having recently completed a review of ribavirin use in more than 22 000 infants in the United States since 1986, we are unclear about the database on which the task force drew its conclusions about safety. Our review indicated no major toxic effects among patients or personnel and an adverse drug reaction rate