Wilderness Medicine: Altitude Illness - HAPE Treatment

[@MedWild]

See the instructor in this video (Dr. Howard Donner) give presentations and teach a variety of hands-on workshops at the upcoming National CME Conferences on Wilderness Medicine. All medical specialities are welcome! wilderness-medicine.com

[@a.k722]

You speak so calmly. Great vids thanks

[@_rrwwcox]

I was that girlfriend! My boyfriend (now husband) got puffy in face in the Dolomites. Five years later we had our honeymoon in the Swiss alps and i made sure his doc gave him plenty of diamox before our trip. Who ended up with signs of HAPE? Yeah, this girl who had been fine at altitude many times before. The difference this time? I was 6 weeks post covid. Your description is spot on, except in my case HAPE onset in only a few hours (i may have missed minute early signs, but I'm a pretty diligent self-monitor when on the mountain). Anyway, mountain friends, please talk to your doc and get enough diamox to save yourself. I thought my demands of my husbands doctor would save my husband, but i ended up saving my own life.

[@bobsiddoway]

I got HAPE last week in the Wind Rivers. Ended me up in the ER after bailing on our backpacking trip days early. My breathing is better, but still definitely compromised and my lungs hurt.

[@tysonkampbjj]

These are really awesome videos. I live in the SF bay area and go to the Sierras as much as I can, and the trip from sea level to 7.5k-10k feet in 5 hours followed by backpacking has been a challenge. I have been experimenting in the best way to make use of my vacation time i.e. the fastest way to get up there and get going and your videos will be invaluable. The explanation of 2k sleep feet / day explains a lot too, as my gf and I had an issue sleeping at 11k when we were at sea level 2 days before: she basically did not recover and we headed back down to regroup. I'll get through all of the videos but so far have seen the first 14 about altitude, and a few about first aid. Again thank you very much as so far I had only been able to find cursory info online about how to better prepare for our backpacking trips.

[@visamedic]

Would it be bad to give this person either nitro or Lasix, in the same manner we would tx pulmonary edema in CHF? Not having the O2 to give the pt we could bag them to give a bipap effect and offload that fluid into the vascular space. provided they weren't to hypotensive, although the fluid being off loaded would bring their pressure back up.