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Chronic bronchial infection plays an important role in nearly every case of asthma in which involvement is severe enough and has lasted long enough. There is abundant clinical experience that vaccine therapy, whether by a specific or by a nonspecific mechanism, is useful in such cases. An autogenous vaccine has at least some claim to a specific factor, and such specificity is most certain if the culture is obtained directly from the bronchial tree through the bronchoscope.
The purpose of this paper is to report the result of therapy in 112 cases in which asthma in children was treated with an autogenous vaccine prepared from material removed through the bronchoscope.
The data presented here are the results of a study in which information was sought on the actual conditions in the tracheobronchial tree in asthmatic children. While a number of reports on bronchoscopic findings for adults have appeared, there have