Brief by Allen Best
Health – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
A 37-year-old man from Pleasanton, Texas, died the weekend before Christmas at a lodge in Mt. Crested Butte, the slope-side town at the base of the Crested Butte ski area. The man had suffered from high-altitude pulmonary edema, in which the lungs fill with fluid.
Frank Vader, the Gunnison County coroner, told the Crested Butte News that the victim had not felt well the entire week, and had he gone to the clinic, he would have been easily diagnosed. The cure is to get to a lower elevation. Mt. Crested Butte is at 9,300 feet in elevation, and normally a trip to nearby Gunnison, at 7,700 feet in elevation, removes most victims from danger.
In Colorado, altitude-related disorders should be considered by visitors from the lowlands who experience congestion or other flu-like symptoms, but they’re not very common — especially for younger people who are physically fit. High-altitude pulmonary edema is relatively rare, and rarer yet is cerebral edema, in which the brain fills with fluid. Heart attacks are the most common form of altitude-related death.
