Cervical surgery may be complicated by acute upper airway obstruction due to hematoma formation. Two cases are reported following cervical surgery where stridor, respiratory distress, and lethal airway occlusion resulted from hemorrhage that did not arise from large vessels. Case 1: A 50-year-old man who had an elective anterior fusion of C5-6 vertebrae developed marked neck swelling and stridor. At autopsy, there was significant cervical interstitial hemorrhage and edema. Major vessels were intact. Case 2: An 86-year-old man who underwent a carotid endarterectomy developed stridor and swelling of his neck. At autopsy, there was extensive interstitial hemorrhage and edema within the soft tissues of the neck. The endarterectomy site was intact. Both deaths were due to upper airway obstruction from postoperative cervical interstitial hemorrhage with no large vessel damage identified. Hemorrhage from small vessels may therefore lead to critical soft tissue hematoma formation and edema with airway obstruction and death.

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The mortality rate for 220 cases of diabetic acidosis among 1,865 diabetic patients was 23.6 per cent when cases in which there were complications were included ; when such cases were eliminated it was S per cent. We feel that it is important in appraising any statistics on diabetic acidosis to take into consideration such complications, which would probably prove fatal even without the acidosis. We used sixth-molar sodium lactate solution in the majority of the cases and feel that it presents the following advantages : ( 1 ) quicker recovery chemically and clinically, (2) requirement of smaller amounts of insulin, (3) less tendency for complications and (4) not much danger of alkalosis. Such danger from treatment with sodium lactate has been over-

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