1 The Children's Hospital, Children's Medical Center, the Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, and Department of Physiology, The Harvard School of Public Health, Boston.
Five patients with severe bulbar poliomyelitis complicated by gastrointestinal perforation and/or hemorrhage are presented. A detailed case report is given in the one patient who recovered. The electrophrenic respirator was instrumental in maintaining this patient's respiration and massive blood transfusions in preventing shock from intestinal hemorrhage.
The gastrointestinal complications of bulbar poliomyelitis appear to be more frequent than previously realized. A relationship between midbrain damage and gastrointestinal lesions, as emphasized by Cushing, occurring during the course of acute bulbar poliomyelitis, is postulated.
Submitted on July 8, 1950