This site is intended for healthcare professionals

Go to /sign-in page

You can view 5 more pages without signing in

Clinical features

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

Patients with ARDS show a gradually worsening picture of respiratory disturbance which may rapidly become life threatening.

Usually, there is a latent period of hours or days after the insult with the patient hospitalised for one of the known aetiologic conditions.

This is then followed by stages of:

  • respiratory distress - dyspnoea, tachypnoea - but with a normal chest radiograph
  • increasing cyanosis, arterial hypoxaemia, and respiratory failure; the chest x-ray now shows diffuse bilateral shadowing which may be asymmetric depending on cause and recent posture
  • hypoxaemia becomes refractory to high inspired oxygen and respiratory acidosis develops
  • there may be death from hypoxic cardiac arrest

Not all stages are observed in all patients and some recover completely.


Related pages

Create an account to add page annotations

Annotations allow you to add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation. E.g. a website or number. This information will always show when you visit this page.