1 Department of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
To the Editor.
The report by McMillan and colleagues1 of the nonpredictiveness of certain clinical and laboratory tests in determining the duration of hospitalization of patients with respiratory syncytial virus adds to our understanding of this important respiratory pathogen. However, we disagree with the authors' implied assumption that ribavirin therapy might be expected to shorten hospitalization and with their concluding recommendation "to institute aerosolized ribavirin therapy for essentially all infants with documented respiratory syncytial virus infection who require hospitalization."1(p26)