BACKGROUND Oedema is a sine qua non for the diagnosis of kwashiorkor yet the mechanisms leading to oedema remain ill defined. AIMS To relate the plasma concentration of radical promoting 'free' iron to the degree of oedema in patients with kwashiorkor. SETTING University teaching hospital. PATIENTS Fifteen children with kwashiorkor, nine of whom had severe and six of whom had a moderate d...

important sign of ill health in clinical medicine. It may occur in the lungs (pulmonary oedema), the abdominal cavity (ascites) and other body cavities (synovial, pericardial and pleural effusions) but in this article only peripheral (subcutaneous) oedema is discussed. In medical practice peripheral oedema tends to get pigeonholed according to possible systemic or peripheral causes eg heart fai...

OBJECTIVES MRI bone oedema has been observed in early and advanced RA and may represent a cellular infiltrate (osteitis) in subchondral bone. We studied MRI scans from RA patients undergoing surgery, seeking to identify regions of bone oedema and examine its histopathological equivalent in resected bone. METHODS Preoperative contrast-enhanced MRI scans were obtained in 11 RA patients schedule...

Bietti crystalline retinal dystrophy is a rare, inherited disorder whose hallmark is the presence of retinal crystal deposits associated with later chorioretinal degeneration. This condition may rarely be complicated by the development of cystoid macular oedema leading to rapid visual decline. Currently, treatment options for this complication of Bietti dystrophy are limited and the visual prog...

Acute pulmonary oedema usually has a fatal outcome. In this clinical report, we present rare cases of pulmonary oedema that were associated with Japanese B encephalitis, lymphangitis in breast carcinoma, fat embolism due to long-bone fracture, and the rupture of cerebral mycotic aneurysms. A total of 18 patients in the four disease categories were collected in two teaching hospitals in Taipei a...

The adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is almost invariably accompanied by permeability pulmonary oedema, usually appearing in the first few hours [1, 2]. The extent and therefore the seriousness of this oedema is proportional to the filtration of fluid and proteins through the pulmonary vascular endothelium. The extreme sensitivity of this filtration to variations of capillary pressure...