This site is intended for healthcare professionals

Go to /sign-in page

You can view 5 more pages before signing in

Cerebral oedema

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

This is an excess of brain water. It often develops around an intrinsic lesion within the brain tissue e g. a tumour or an abscess, or in relation to trauma or ischaemic brain damage.

Cerebral oedema may complicate a variety of conditions, for example:

  • acute hepatic failure
  • benign intracranial hypertension
  • Reye's syndrome
  • excess fluid infusion in a dehydrated/hypernatraemic patient
  • rarely in diabetic ketoacidosis

High altitude cerebral oedema may result from an abrupt increase in cerebral blood flow at 3500 - 4000 m upwards.

Different forms of cerebral oedema are described:

  • vasogenic:
    • caused by excessive protein rich fluid leakage into the extracellular space through damaged capillaries
    • particularly affects the white matter
    • treated with systemic corticosteroids

  • cytotoxic:
    • damage is intracellular, within the neurones and glia

  • interstitial:
    • CSF leaks into the extracellular space e.g. non-communicating hydrocephalus

Cerebral oedema appears as a hypodense area on CT scans.


Related pages

Create an account to add page annotations

Add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation, such as a web address or phone number. This information will always be displayed when you visit this page