Early symptoms of<unk>  <unk>  generally correspond with those of moderate to severe acute mountain sickness (AMS). Initial symptoms of<unk>  commonly include confusion, loss of consciousness, fever, ataxia, photophobia, rapid heart beat, lassitude, and an altered mental state. Sufferers generally attempt to cease physical activities, regardless of their necessity for survival. Severe headaches develop and sufferers lose the ability to sit up. Retinal venous dilation occurs in 59% of people with<unk> . Rarer symptoms include brisk deep tendon reflexes, retinal hemorrhages, blurred vision, extension plantar reflexes, and ocular paralysis. Cranial nerve palsies occur in some unusual cases. In the bestselling 1996 non-fiction book Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, Jon Krakauer describes the effects of<unk>  upon Dale Kruse, a forty-four-year-old dentist and one of the members of Scott Fischer's team: ‘Kruse was having an incredibly difficult time simply trying to dress himself. He put his climbing harness on inside out, threaded it through the fly of his wind suit, and failed to fasten the buckle; fortunately, Fischer and Neal Beidleman noticed the screwup before Kruse started to descend. "If he'd tried to rappel down the ropes like that," says Beidleman, "he would have immediately popped out of his harness and fallen to the bottom of the Lhotse Face." ‘"It was like I was very drunk," Kruse recollects. "I couldn't walk without stumbling, and completely lost the ability to think or speak. It was a really strange feeling. I'd have some word in my mind, but I couldn't figure out how to bring it to my lips. So Scott and Neal had to get me dressed and make sure my harness was on correctly, then Scott lowered me down the fixed ropes." By the time Kruse arrived in Base Camp, he says, "it was still another three or four days before I could walk from my tent to the mess tent without stumbling all over the place."’ Patients with<unk>  have an elevated white blood cell count, but otherwise their blood count and biochemistry are normal. If a lumbar puncture is performed, it will show normal cerebral spinal fluid and cell counts but an increase in pressure. In one study, CT scans of patients with<unk>  exhibited ventricle compression and low density in the cerebellum. Only a few autopsies have been performed on fatal cases of<unk> ; they showed swollen gyri, spongiosis of white matter, and compressed sulci. There was some variation between individuals, and the results may not be typical of<unk>  deaths.
High-altitude cerebral edema
High-altitude pulmonary edema
Decompression sickness
Chronic mountain sickness
Intracranial hypertension syndrome
Idiopathic intracranial hypertension
Viral meningitis
Cerebral edema