PULMONARY EDEMA IN PATIENTS DYING WITH DISEASE OF THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM

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Abstract
Various lesions of the central nervous system in man are occasionally complicated by severe acute pulmonary edema. This event has been noted after cerebrovascular accidents, during epileptic seizures, and in other disorders of cerebrospinal function. To the clinicians who were first impressed with the association of such apparently dissimilar conditions, the origin of the pulmonary edema was frankly mystifying. At that time it was perhaps natural to implicate direct neurogenic effects on the lungs, as patients in whom pulmonary edema developed in the course of neurological disease were usually reported to show no evidence of cardiovascular abnormality. In recent years a greater appreciation of the stresses of ordinary living and of disease and a widening field of physiological knowledge have made it possible to evaluate more accurately the impact of various normal and abnormal stresses on circulatory function.1 In 1918 Moutier2 observed a man who had sustained a