Chest
Clinical Investigations in Critical CareHigh-Resolution CT Findings in Mild Pulmonary Fat Embolism
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
A total of nine patients (eight males and one female; median age, 26 years; range, 17 to 35 years) with documented FES were included in this study. The first five cases were prospectively selected because of the mild severity of imaging findings and indolent clinical course, and the following four cases were retrospectively collected after review of the medical records of patients treated in our hospitals for FES in the last 3 years with the same criteria. No postoperative cases are included in
Results
HRCT demonstrated ground-glass opacities in seven patients (Figure 1, Figure 2) and nodular opacities in two patients (Figure 3, Figure 4). In five patients, the ground-glass opacities were associated with interlobular septal thickening (Figure 1, Figure 2). No airspace consolidation was observed in any of our cases. A peripheral-subpleural, nongravity-dependent distribution was noted in three patients with ground-glass opacities (Fig 2). In four patients, the ground-glass opacities had a
Discussion
Trauma-related fat embolism is defined by the blockage of blood vessels from fat globules that are usually released from traumatic or iatrogenic injury to the long bones.123 The lung is the most frequently affected organ, but reported incidence of pulmonary fat embolism varies considerably between different series; Heitzman9 reported that some degree of pulmonary fat embolism regularly follows long-bone injury. The clinical syndrome, however, is reported to develop between 0.5% and 2% following
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