Effects of Steroids on Cerebral Edema in Cats

ALTHOUGH clinically the beneficial effect of steroid therapy in patients with cerebral edema is well established,¹,²only recently has experimental evidence indicated that dexamethasone treatment may diminish cerebral edema associated with traumatic lesions. Poor parameters for assessing the extent of edema, insufficient experimental time interval, and lack of control regarding the biological activity of the drugs in the species used are some of the reasons why the studies reported to date have been contradictory or inconclusive.³⁻¹¹Thus, previously we could not demonstrate any effect of cortisone on water and electrolyte content of edematous cerebral tissues of the cat.³These earlier experiments, however, did not rule out the possibility that the volume of the tissue which became edematous was diminished in treated animals nor was there any assurance that the cat responds to cortisone in the same way as the human. The present study was designed