[History of the early acute R.D.S. and description of a method to improve immediate postmortem fixation of the lung (author's transl)].

A technique for immediate lung fixation on patients who die of ARDS is described. The advantages compared to the selective needle biopsy, the transthoracic circumscript fixation and the lung fixation organ removal are: 1. functional anatomical proportions are kept, 2. Artefact mainly caused by autolysis is avoided, 3. Simple performance and low costs. The results obtained with the described technique are presented. It is demonstrated that the changes in the initial shock phase correlate well with the pattern of its distribution. These changes are not uniform. Therefore we feel that the results with biopsy are somewhat doubtful.