During the spring of 1977, there were nine admissions for Haemophilus epiglottitis at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. A review of bacteriologic and medical records was therefore undertaken to see if there had been similar "outbreaks" of epiglottitis in the past. Eighty-eight cases of influenzae type b bacteremia with inflammation of the epiglottis were found for the last 22 years. A comparison group of 1,120 children who had meningitis due to H influenzae, Neisseria meningitidis, and Streptococcus pneumoniae from the same period was obtained from a registry that includes all spinal fluid culture-documented cases at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh since 1940.1
Bacteremic Haemophilus epiglottitis was uncommon at this hospital until the late 1960s (zero to two cases per year), but there has been an average of seven cases per year from 1968 through 1975 and an increase to 17 cases in the last 12 months (Table). The Table