POSTOPERATIVE NUTRITIONAL EDEMA

Abstract

Nutritional edema has long been recognized as a concomitant of underfeeding and has been accurately described on many occasions in connection with starvation, war edema, beriberi and dysentery. Its close association with insufficient protein intake has received frequent comment, and the similarity between such edema and that seen in so-called nephrosis has been noted by numerous writers. The results of animal experimentation by several investigators have shown clearly a relationship between the production of edema and a lowering of the serum protein, especially in association with very excessive amounts of water and sodium chloride. A fairly complete bibliography on the subject will be found in the review of nutritional edema by Weech and Ling.¹ Very little, if any, attention, however, has been paid to the occurrence of edema following surgical procedures. It is the purpose of this paper to present evidence that nutritional edema is not uncommonly associated with