The right ventricle and pulmonary vascular obstruction in bronchitis with emphysema.

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Abstract
An attempt to measure the patency of the pulmonary vascular bed in lungs affected by chronic bronchitis and emphysema was investigated on 31 lungs at necropsy. The results were compared with patency measurements in 16 normal lungs and 6 lungs from patients who had had spasmodic asthma. Vascular bed patency was assessed by timing the flow of one litre of fluid through the pulmonary vascular bed. In chronic bronchitis with emphysema there was a wide range of flow times but the mean flow time was three times the mean of the times for the normal lungs. There was no consistent relation between the flow times and the weights of the right ventricles, suggesting that in right ventricular hypertrophy the important etiological factors are functional rather than organic.