Medicine in extreme environments: danger and opportunity
The problems encountered by expedition doctors are diverse and can be immensely challenging. They range from decompression sickness to highaltitude cerebral oedema, and from immersion hypothermia to the management of multiple trauma patients without any medical kit. Advice was presented on how to deal with these problems and many more. Our understanding of the pathophysiology of high-altitude cerebral oedema is still incomplete, but there is hope that work currently under way may identify genes that predispose individuals to altitude illness.