Abstract
MOST investigations of pulmonary edema have concentrated either on the initiating factors that lead to excess fluid leakage from the pulmonary capillaries or on the gross pathophysiology of the lung and whole animal. There is an intermediate process which is that of fluid movement and accumulation within the various spaces inside the lung. This process has received very little attention perhaps, as Visscher and his associates stated, due to the lack of good methods for seeing the edema process with precision.
A few direct and indirect studies of individual components of the process have been made such as the electron microscopic studies of Schulz on the thickening of the alveolar septum in edema and the all-or-none filling of individual alveoli deduced from the mechanical behavior of edematous lungs by Cook and co-workers.
In our studies we examined the histologic pattern of fluid filling by using rapid freezing of the inflated, living lung: a procedure that fixes the lung very quickly at a given point in time, thus permitting us to “see” the lung as it was in life.
