How is pulmonary edema treated?
Pulmonary oedema is treated with helping the body to resolve the underlying causes; if you can improve the efficiency of the heart. The heart is no longer going "lubb dubb" in a rhythmic way, but has now become irregular in its heartbeat. If you can correct that, you can help pulmonary oedema. If they've had a heart attack, you do whatever it takes; there are certain medications that lessen the pressures on the heart. That'll help move things forward so they can clear out the lung and get that fluid out of the lung. You'll find that oxygen is extremely important in treating these patients, but probably one of the more important drugs also is Lasix, the diuretics, to help them increase their ability to urinate out that extra fluid. There is controversy, like many things in medicine, about whether diuretics are as helpful in this situation as possible, but most of us still use diuretics in the treatment of acute pulmonary oedema. If the pulmonary oedema is not due to the left heart, but rather to a lung injury (such as with viral infections that will give you the acute respiratory distress syndrome) then these patients almost always will have to go into the intensive care unit and have a tube placed. Then pressure ventilation, with high concentrations of oxygen, is needed to treat that form of pulmonary oedema.
