Corticosteroids, such as dexamethasone and budesonide, have been shown to improve outcomes in children with all severities of croup. Significant relief is obtained as early as six hours after administration. While effective when given by injection, or by inhalation, giving the medication by mouth is preferred. A single dose is usually all that is required, and is generally considered to be quite safe. Dexamethasone at doses of 0.15, 0.3 and 0.6 mg/kg appear to be all equally effective.

Moderate to severe croup may be improved temporarily with nebulized epinephrine. While epinephrine typically produces a reduction in croup severity within 10–30 minutes, the benefits last for only about 2 hours. If the condition remains improved for 2–4 hours after treatment and no other complications arise, the child is typically discharged from the hospital.

The disease may remain manageable, but in more severe cases, lymph nodes in the neck may swell, and breathing and swallowing are more difficult. People in this stage should seek immediate medical attention, as obstruction in the throat may require intubation or a tracheotomy. Abnormal cardiac rhythms can occur early in the course of the illness or weeks later, and can lead to heart failure. Diphtheria can also cause paralysis in the eye, neck, throat, or respiratory muscles. Patients with severe cases are put in a hospital intensive care unit and given a diphtheria antitoxin. Since antitoxin does not neutralize toxin that is already bound to tissues, delaying its administration is associated with an increase in mortality risk. Therefore, the decision to administer diphtheria antitoxin is based on clinical diagnosis, and should not await laboratory confirmation.

Antibiotics have not been demonstrated to affect healing of local infection in diphtheria patients treated with antitoxin. Antibiotics are used in patients or carriers to eradicate "C. diphtheriae" and prevent its transmission to others. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends either:

- Metronidazole

- Erythromycin is given (orally or by injection) for 14 days (40 mg/kg per day with a maximum of 2 g/d), or

- Procaine penicillin G is given intramuscularly for 14 days (300,000 U/d for patients weighing 10 kg); patients with allergies to penicillin G or erythromycin can use rifampin or clindamycin.

In cases that progress beyond a throat infection, diphtheria toxin spreads through the blood and can lead to potentially life-threatening complications that affect other organs, such as the heart and kidneys. Damage to the heart caused by the toxin affects the heart's ability to pump blood or the kidneys' ability to clear wastes. It can also cause nerve damage, eventually leading to paralysis. About 40% to 50% of those left untreated can die.

Empirical treatment should generally be started in a patient in whom suspicion of diphtheria is high.

Prescribing antibiotics for laryngitis is not suggested practice. The antibiotics penicillin V and erythromycin are not effective for treating acute laryngitis. Erythromycin may improve voice disturbances after one week and cough after two weeks, however any modest subjective benefit is not greater than the adverse effects, cost, and the risk of bacteria developing resistance to the antibiotics. Health authorities have been strongly encouraging physicians to decrease the prescribing of antibiotics to treat common upper respiratory tract infections because antibiotic usage does not significantly reduce recovery time for these viral illnesses. Decreased antibiotic usage could also have prevented drug resistant bacteria. Some have advocated a delayed antibiotic approach to treating URIs which seeks to reduce the consumption of antibiotics while attempting to maintain patient satisfaction. Most studies show no difference in improvement of symptoms between those treated with antibiotics right away and those with delayed prescriptions. Most studies also show no difference in patient satisfaction, patient complications, symptoms between delayed and no antibiotics. A strategy of "no antibiotics" results in even less antibiotic use than a strategy of "delayed antibiotics".

There is no good evidence supporting the effectiveness of over-the-counter cough medications for reducing coughing in adults or children. Children under 2 years old should not be given any type of cough or cold medicine due to the potential for life-threatening side effects. In addition, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the use of cough medicine to relieve cough symptoms should be avoided in children under 4 years old, and the safety is questioned for children under 6 years old.

No specific treatment is available, but antibiotics can be used to prevent secondary infections.

Vaccines are available (ATCvet codes: for the inactivated vaccine, for the live vaccine; plus various combinations).

Biosecurity protocols including adequate isolation, disinfection are important in controlling the spread of the disease.

Avian infectious bronchitis (IB) is an acute and highly contagious respiratory disease of chickens. The disease is caused by avian infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), a coronavirus, and characterized by respiratory signs including gasping, coughing, sneezing, tracheal rales, and nasal discharge. In young chickens, severe respiratory distress may occur. In layers, respiratory distress, nephritis, decrease in egg production, and loss of internal (watery egg white) and external (fragile, soft, irregular or rough shells, shell-less) egg quality are reported.

During the latest outbreak of the disease (2004), several treatment methods were tested. Main treatment involved the administration of antibiotics, in some cases glucose solution or dietary mixtures were additionally supplemented. Outcome of the different treatment methods varied greatly. Especially the success of antibiotic treatment and a widespread use on wild animals remains a matter of debate.

Prevention and control programs must take into account local understandings of people-poultry relations. In the past, programs that have focused on singular, place-based understandings of disease transmission have been ineffective. In the case of Northern Vietnam, health workers saw poultry as commodities with an environment that was under the control of people. Poultry existed in the context of farms, markets, slaughterhouses, and roads while humans were indirectly the primary transmitters of avian flu, placing the burden of disease control on people. However, farmers saw their free ranging poultry in an environment dominated by nonhuman forces that they could not exert control over. There were a host of nonhuman actors such as wild birds and weather patterns whose relationships with the poultry fostered the disease and absolved farmers of complete responsibility for disease control.

Attempts at singular, place-based controls sought to teach farmers to identify areas where their behavior could change without looking at poultry behaviors. Behavior recommendations by Vietnam's National Steering Committee for Avian Influenza Control and Prevention (NSCAI) were drawn from the FAO Principles of Biosecurity. These included restrictions from entering areas where poultry are kept by erecting barriers to segregate poultry from non-human contact, limits on human movement of poultry and poultry-related products ideally to transporters, and recommendations for farmers to wash hands and footwear before and after contact with poultry. Farmers, pointed to wind and environmental pollution as reasons poultry would get sick. NSCAI recommendations also would disrupt longstanding livestock production practices as gates impede sales by restricting assessment of birds by appearance and offend customers by limiting outside human contact. Instead of incorporating local knowledge into recommendations, cultural barriers were used as scapegoats for failed interventions. Prevention and control methods have been more effective when also considering the social, political, and ecological agents in play.

Culling is used in order to decrease the threat of avian influenza transmission by killing potentially infected birds. The FAO manual on HPAI control recommends a zoning strategy which begins with the identification of an infected area (IA) where sick or dead birds have tested positive. All poultry in this zone are culled while the area 1 to 5 km from the outer boundary of the IA is considered the restricted area (RA) placed under strict surveillance. 2 to 10 km from the RA is the control area (CA) that serves as a buffer zone in case of spread. Culling is not recommended beyond the IA unless there is evidence of spread. The manual, however, also provides examples of how control was carried out between 2004 and 2005 to contain H5N1 where all poultry was to be stamped out in a 3 km radius beyond the infected point and beyond that a 5 km radius where all fowl was to be vaccinated. This culling method was indiscriminate as a large proportion of the poultry inside these areas were small backyard flocks which did not travel great enough distances to carry infection to adjacent villages without human effort and may have not been infected at all. Between 2004 and 2005, over 100 million chickens were culled in Asia to contain H5N1.

The risk of mass culling of birds and the resulting economic impact led farmers who were reluctant to report sick poultry. The culls often preempted actual lab testing for H5N1 as avian flu policy justified sacrificing poultry as a safeguard against HPAI spread. In response to these policies, farmers in Vietnam between 2003 and 2004 became more and more unwilling to surrender apparently healthy birds to authorities and stole poultry destined for culls as it stripped poultry of their biosocial and economic worth. By the end of 2005, the government implemented a new policy that targeted high-risk flock in the immediate vicinity of infected farms and instituted voluntary culling with compensation in the case of a local outbreak.

Not only did culling result in severe economic impacts especially for small scale farmers, culling itself may be an ineffective preventative measure. In the short-term, mass culling achieves its goals of limiting the immediate spread of HPAI, it has been found to impede the evolution of host resistance which is important for the long-term success of HPAI control. Mass culling also selects for elevated influenza virulence and results in the greater mortality of birds overall. Effective culling strategies must be selective as well as considerate of economic impacts to optimize epidemiological control and minimize economic and agricultural destruction.

Diphtheritic stomatitis is a recently discovered disease and has thus far been reported only in Yellow-eyed penguins ("Megadyptes antipodes"). Its symptoms are similar to human diphtheria and is characterized by infecteous lesions in the mouth area that impede swallowing and cause respiratory troubles. The infection is caused by "Corynebacterium amycolatum", an aerobic Gram-positive bacterium and mainly affects very young chicks. However, it seems likely that a triggering agent (e.g. a virus) might be involved in which renders the corynebacterium a secondary pathogen.

The disease has been a serious cause of mortality in the 2002 and 2004 Yellow-eyed penguin breeding seasons. It seems that only the New Zealand South Island and Stewart Island/Rakiura were affected.

Airway obstruction may cause obstructive pneumonitis or post-obstructive pneumonitis.

Causes of upper airway obstruction include foreign body aspiration, blunt laryngotracheal trauma, penetrating laryngotracheal trauma, tonsillar hypertrophy, paralysis of the vocal cord or vocal fold, acute laryngotracheitis such as viral croup, bacterial tracheitis, epiglottitis, peritonsillar abscess, pertussis, retropharyngeal abscess, spasmodic croup. In basic and advanced life support airway obstructions are often referred to as "A-problems". Management of airways relies on both minimal-invasive and invasive techniques.