Prognosis of acute polyneuritis requiring artificial ventilation.

We compared two selected groups of patients with acute Guillain-Barré syndrome requiring artificial ventilation. Both groups were treated with conventional therapy, group A (n = 35) between 1970 and 1978, group B (n = 21) between 1979 and 1983. Neither plasmapheresis nor any other immunosuppressive treatment was applied. Significant differences were found favouring group B: There was a decline of mortality from about 60% to less than 10% (p less than 0.001) and a smaller number of severe complications due to improvement of supportive care.