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"It was the bane of my existence during my early years in practice," states Dr. Glenn Isaacson, now Professor and Chairman of Otolaryngology at Temple University School of Medicine. "Lots of driving through red lights to get to the hospital." The disease he refers to is epiglottitis, or, to use its more precise name, supraglottitis. This bacterial infection of the tissues directly above the vocal cords. Epiglottitis causes rapid swelling of these tissues which fall back over the airway and block it, causing death by asphyxiation. The usual cause is a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae type B. Because of wide spread vaccination against it, this bacterium is not commonly found in children today. This has caused the incidence of epiglottitis in children to drop from around 12 cases to one for every 100,000 children.
On its face, the dramatic...