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You see this done often: a breathing treatment with Albuterol, or
even Albuterol plus Atrovent, and occasionally with Xopenex, for a
continuous run of 2 plus treatments for up to an hour, or even 24
hours. Well, I have never done a treatment for an entire day, yet
I've heard of it by other therapists from other hospitals. The
question of the day is: do continuous treatments do any good? I've
always been of the belief that three continuous treatments and
you're out. By this point, those beta adrenergic receptor cells
have to be saturated. And, usually, if you're going to see a
patient's lungs open up, it'll be before that 4th treatment is
started. Another question I'd be willing to ask is: How long does
an Albuterol microbial sit on a beta 2 receptor cell. If it's for
less than 15 ...
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