50 years of oral rehydration

50 years of oral rehydration therapy: the solution is still simple

• David R Nalin
• Richard A
• • diarrhoeal deaths.
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     In addition, ORT helped reduce the nutritional impact of diarrhoea. In the past, patients with acute watery diarrhoeal diseases often received only sips of water without food, euphemistically called “resting the stomach”, which contributed to iatrogenic marasmus.
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     The resumption of nutritional intake immediately after rehydration, which became standard practice at the Cholera Research Laboratory in Dhaka (now the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh—icddr,b) during the 1960s, and a component of the ORT approach, greatly reduced this problem in countries with ORT programmes. A 1978 Lancet Editorial noted that the recognition that glucose enhanced sodium and water absorption, which led to the development of ORT, “was potentially the most important medical advance this century”.
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     Since the developmental history of ORT is well documented,
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     we focus here on five lessons from 50 years of ORT use (panel).