ABSTRACT
High altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) is a potentially lethal form of mountain sickness which, like acute mountain sickness (AMS), affects previously healthy persons who go rapidly to high altitude. A few hours after arrival patients suffer the usual symptoms of AMS but then become more breathless than their companions. Over the next few hours the breathlessness increases, a cough develops which is first dry but later productive of frothy white sputum. The sputum may become blood-tinged. The signs of obvious pulmonary edema are found and cyanosis may be detected. Some patients literally drown in their own secretions and become comatose and can die if no action is taken. Patients have tachycardia and tachypnea with mild pyrexia and leucocytosis and a characteristic X-ray appearance. The pathology, in fatal cases, is of patchy edema of the lungs.
