New treatment method for reexpansion pulmonary edema: differential lung ventilation.

Reexpansion pulmonary edema (REPE) is an iatrogenic complication that develops in a lung rapidly reinflated after varied periods of collapse. Though infrequent, it is often lethal. Measures to prevent REPE are well known and mild cases may be reversed with conventional ventilator therapy and medication; however, there is no definitive treatment for this condition in its severest forms. Asynchronous differential lung ventilation is a relatively new therapeutic modality for preoperative, intraoperative, or postoperative treatment of respiratory failure secondary to ventilation-perfusion mismatch. Successful treatment of severe REPE in a 29-year-old male patient is described, using asynchronous differential lung ventilation.