Cerebral edema associated with acute hepatic failure.

The clinicopathological findings of cerebral edema were investigated in patients with acute hepatic failure autopsied at Okayama University Hospital between 1970 and 1980 retrospectively. Nine (64%) of 14 hepatic failure cases were found to have cerebral edema during a post-mortem examination of the brain. Clinical features of the patients with cerebral edema were not significantly different from those of the patients without cerebral edema. However, general convulsions were observed more frequently in patients later found to have cerebral edema. Moreover, the length of time from deep coma to death was much shorter in the brain edema cases with cerebral herniation than without herniation.