Respiratory and Cardiovascular Function

HEATH and Whitaker 1 applied the term hypertensive pulmonary vascular disease to patients with chronic, severe pulmonary hypertension. They emphasized that this disease is a distinct clinicopathologic entity with uniform clinical features and characteristic morphologic changes of the pulmonary arteries and arterioles irrespective of the etiology of the hypertension. The vascular changes indicate restriction of the pulmonary vascular bed, which may alter pulmonary gas exchange. This study of the respiratory physiology of such patients was undertaken to determine if the uniform clinical picture could in part result from some common, specific pathophysiologic mechanism.