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Translation
“If any surgeon with material as large as chief physician Holmer could really take the decision, as a test, to let every second croup patient (with an indication for tracheotomy) remain without the operation and every second undergo the operation, and it turned out that the proportion of unoperated [patients who] recovered was equal to or higher than those operated [on], then one could begin to doubt the value of tracheotomy; but before two such equivalent statistics on 1) croup treated expectantly and 2) croup treated operatively become available, one may reasonably assume that tracheotomy saves a number of percentage points of children, who during expectant or medical treatment would have died from suffocation.
When the severity of dyspnoea has indicated the [need for the] operation, then (at least during the last couple of years) no contraindication [to surgery] has been accepted in the 1st department at the Kommunehospitalet; irrespective of the low chances of a satisfactory final result, the operation has been performed despite severe intoxication, young age, pneumonia, or other complications.”
Translation by Christian Gluud