The Inexcusable Disease

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Abstract
The SPECIAL COMMUNICATION in this issue, "Serologic Therapy of Tetanus in the United States, 1965-1971" (p 42), is encouraging in that it shows a distinct trend toward the use of human rather than animal antitoxin in the treatment of this gratuitously unnecessary disease, but it demonstrates several other points as well. First, even though serotherapy was of some help, its value in preventing death from tetanus was hardly sufficient to generate any cheers. If one assumes that the "serotherapy" and the "no serotherapy" groups are comparable (a somewhat hazardous assumption, as the authors point out), a reduction in the case fatality rate from 78% without serotherapy to 62% with serotherapy hardly puts serum into the category of a major therapeutic agent. Second, the article points out that the optimal therapeutic dose of tetanus immune globulin (TIG) is yet to be determined, but suggests that 500 units may be as effective

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