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The effects of high altitude on humans are mostly ... from the mild symptoms of acute ... Research also indicates elevated risk of permanent brain damage in people ...
High-altitude cerebral edema (HACE) is a medical condition in which the brain swells with fluid because of the physiological effects of traveling to a high altitude. It generally appears in patients who have acute mountain sickness and involves disorientation, lethargy, and nausea among other symptoms.
The most serious symptoms of altitude sickness arise from edema (fluid accumulation in the tissues of the body). At very high altitude, humans can get either high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), or high-altitude cerebral edema (HACE). The physiological cause of altitude-induced edema is not conclusively established.
Cerebral edema is commonly seen in a variety of brain injuries including ischemic stroke, subarachnoid hemorrhage, traumatic brain injury, subdural, epidural, or intracerebral hematoma, hydrocephalus, brain cancer, brain infections, low blood sodium levels, high altitude, and acute liver failure.
CMS was first described in 1925 by Carlos Monge Medrano, a Peruvian doctor who specialised in diseases of high altitude. [3] While acute mountain sickness is experienced shortly after ascent to high altitude, chronic mountain sickness may develop only after many years of living at high altitude. In medicine, high altitude is defined as over ...
Re-entry HAPE is also an entity that has been described in persons who normally live at high altitude but who develop pulmonary edema after returning from a stay at low altitude. [3] If HAPE is not treated, there is a 50% risk of mortality. [4] Symptoms include crackling sounds when breathing, dyspnea (at rest), and cyanosis. [4]
Failure to acclimatize may result in altitude sickness, including high-altitude pulmonary edema or cerebral edema . [11] [12] Humans have survived for 2 years at 5,950 m (19,520 ft) [475 millibars (14.0 inHg; 6.89 psi) of atmospheric pressure], which appears to be near the limit of the permanently tolerable highest altitude. [13]
Ebullism is the formation of water vapour bubbles in bodily fluids due to reduced environmental pressure, usually at extreme high altitude.It occurs because a system of liquid and gas at equilibrium will see a net conversion of liquid to gas as pressure lowers; for example, liquids reach their boiling points at lower temperatures when the pressure on them is lowered. [1]