CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE

1 November 1932

journal article
research article
Published by American Medical Association (AMA) in Archives of internal medicine (1908)

Vol. 50 (5) , 690-720
https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.1932.00150180043004

Abstract

To the fundamental studies of Sir James MacKenzie we are indebted for the concept that in cardiac disease the patient's response to effort constitutes the best index to prognosis and the most accurate guide to therapy. Although most clinicians would agree that the patient's dyspnea, that is, his subjective respiratory distress, is the most important clinical phenomenon in cardiac disease, an adequate explanation of the mechanism of this symptom has yet to be offered. The generally accepted idea of respiratory control involves the assumption that any muscular effort that is sufficiently severe to increase the ventilation is necessarily associated with shifts toward acidity in the blood or in the respiratory center itself. According to Haldane,¹Winterstein²and numerous other authors, the activity of the respiratory center is dependent almost entirely on the hydrogen ion concentration of the arterial blood. The recent studies of Gesell³have demonstrated the

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:

Clinical Studies of the Respiration. III. A Mechanical Factor in the Production of Dyspnea in Patients with Cardiac Disease
The Lancet Healthy Longevity, 1918