Friend, J. A. R.

2018-09-13T15:55:48Z

2018-09-13T15:55:48Z

1962

This is an account of five patients seen in :. iards 21, 23 and 24 of the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh; all the patients suffered from some form of oedema. The severity of the oedema varied greatly in the different patients, as did the factors responsible for its appearance. This account aims merely to recount the clinical histories, with special emphasis on the oedema, and to discuss the causes as revealed in each patient.

In the interests of brevity and clarity, it has been necessary to omit some of the details of the history and clinical findings in each patient where they were not strictly relevant to the problem of oedema, but any details of special interest have also been included. Although this is intended primarily as a clinical account, the discussion of the pathogenesis of oedema in each patient must, as so often in medicine today, delve into mechanisms at a microscopic and even at a molecular level. At this level, the discussion runs the risk of either being too brief and dogmatic, or else too detailed and inconclusive; and at any level the discussion must inevitably be incomplete. Many of the theories of the pathogenesis of oedema are speculative and controversial, and the more complete the reading of the literature, the more confusing the picture becomes. The author has attempted, in this account, to discuss some of the more important factors in the production of oedema, but has tried to avoid confusing himself and the reader with too much detail.

Oedema, which may be defined as a localised or generalised increase in the volume of the interstitial fluid, can arise in many diseases, and be the result of the interplay of a number of factors. These factors are not well understood - but the first patient suffered from oedema of a type where the simpler explanations would seem to suffice.

http://hdl.handle.net/1842/32229

The University of Edinburgh

Annexe Thesis Digitisation Project 2018 Block 20

Five patients with oedema: written for the Wightman Prize in Clinical Medicine, 1962

Thesis or Dissertation

Doctoral

PhD Doctor of Philosophy