Abdominal compartment syndrome update

There’s been another review published in Clinics in Chest Medicine.

The term ACS was first used by Fietsam and colleagues^[2] in the late 1980s to describe the pathophysiologic alterations resulting from IAH secondary to aortic aneurysm surgery: “In four patients that received more than 25 L of fluid resuscitation increased IAP developed after aneurysm repair. It was manifested by increased ventilatory pressure, increased central venous pressure, and decreased urinary output. This set of findings constitutes an abdominal compartment syndrome caused by massive interstitial and retroperitoneal swelling… Opening the abdominal incision was associated with dramatic improvements….”

But this is not just a surgical entity. Though increasingly described in critically ill medical patients the syndrome remains underappreciated.

Background here.