Fluid balance and colloid osmotic pressure in acute respiratory failure: optimizing therapy

Abstract

Acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome continue to be major causes of morbidity and mortality in the intensive care unit due to a lack of specific effective therapy. Affecting nearly 200,000 people every year in the USA alone, patients with this syndrome often require extensive intensive care unit and hospital care, leading to enormous utilization of healthcare resources and significant expenditures, and ultimately leaving survivors with a reduced quality of life. A disease of altered capillary permeability, acute lung injury (ALI)/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is characterized by significant fluid imbalances and oncotic pressure changes. Although investigations directed at these abnormalities may improve patient-centered outcomes, fluid management in ALI/ARDS continues to be a source of great controversy. In this review, we discuss fluid balance and the colloid osmotic pressure gradients in ALI/ARDS, followed by a review of the prognostic implications of increasing extravascular lung water, and conclude with contemporary approaches to optimizing therapy in this condition, including the role of albumin and diuretic therapy.

Keywords::

• acute lung injury
• ARDS
• colloids
• extravascular lung water
• hypoproteinemia
• intravenous fluids

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.