Acute pulmonary edema: after the rescue

Once the acute pulmonary edema episode has been broken the nursing task shifts from rescue to proving the decongestion worked and counting what it cost — reading the fluid balance, the weight trend, the respiratory status and the oxygen requirement together as the evidence of response, watching the potassium and the renal function that hard diuresis erodes, questioning the next diuretic dose when the patient has moved from congested to dry, and sending the patient home able to name the early signs that would bring the episode back.