Related Experiment Videos
Re-expansion pulmonary edema following puncture of a giant bulla
E H McCoskey1, L M McKinney, R P Byrd
1Division of Pulmonary Medicine, James H. Quillen Veterans Administration Medical Center, and Quillen College of Medicine, East Tennessee State University, Mountain Home, Tenn., USA.
Abstract:
Ipsilateral pulmonary edema may occur in a lung that has been rapidly reinflated after a period of collapse. The syndrome of re-expansion pulmonary edema is associated with variable degrees of hypotension and hypoxemia. In its extreme form, it may result in cardiac arrest and death. The initial cause of uninflated pulmonary parenchyma described with re-expansion pulmonary edema has typically been either a large undrained pleural effusion or a pneumothorax. The authors describe a patient in whom re-expansion pulmonary edema developed when inadvertent puncture of large emphysematous bullae released previously atelectatic lung.