[Pulmonary fibrosis following ARDS. Case report of successful intensive therapy (author's transl)]

The course of the illness of a 56 year old female patient is reported, who is still surviving one and a half years after developing advanced, presumably progressive, so called "shock-lung syndrome". Following two episodes of hemorrhagic shock due to intestinal hemorrhage and post-operative secondary hemorrhage, interstitial lung edema developed, which was resistant to therapy. During the following weeks this was followed by bronchopneumonia with symptoms of sepsis persisting over several weeks. Between the third and seventh week of artificial ventilation X-ray of the lungs showed significant progressive changes of the interstitial tissues. This correlated with a progressive deterioration in gas exchange for O2 and CO2, which reached its peak in the seventh week with a paO2 of 71 mm Hg at a FIO2 = 1 and a paCO2 of 68 mm Hg at a minute volume of 15,51. The compliance of lung and thorax was severely reduced at 19 m1/cm H2O. At this apparently unfavourable time the patient was weaned off the respirator, and subsequently, over a period of three weeks, from oxygen insufflation. After eleven weeks of therapy, transfer to the medical ward was possible, with discharge from the hospital following three weeks later. The lung function tests at the time of discharge revealed a high grade reduction of all lung volumes and capacities without a significant obstructive component. The findings have shown a definite improvement during the following one and a half years. In retrospect the polypragmatic intensive therapy measures do not allow valid generalised therapeutic guidelines to be derived. We conclude, however, from this single observation, that therapeutic nihilism is not justified even in a progressive shock-lung syndrome which appears clinically and radiologically to be at an "irreversible" end stage.