This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Michael A. Matthay, MD; Richard A. Matthay, MD

JAMA. 1991;265(23):3109-3111.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Considerable basic and clinical research has been devoted to understanding the natural history, pathophysiology, and pathogenesis of acute lung injury. Several neutrophil-dependent and neutrophil-independent mechanisms are probably important in mediating the initial phase of acute lung injury.^1,2 The injury involves the airways, the interstitium, and the pleural spaces as well as the endothelial and the epithelial barriers of the lung.^1,2 The original description of acute lung injury (also known as the adult respiratory distress syndrome) emphasized that it is a clinical syndrome of acute respiratory failure with bilateral roentgenographic infiltrates from both atelectasis and noncardiogenic pulmonary edema.³ Although this initial description was useful, it became apparent that an expanded definition was needed to achieve better precision in identifying the mechanisms responsible for acute lung injury and to determine the prognosis for survival.

An expanded definition has, therefore, been developed that includes a proposed semiquantitative scoring . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California at San Francisco; Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?