BACKGROUND Left ventricular diastolic dysfunction, with secondary atrial pressure elevation, is a well-known concept. On the contrary, effect of left atrial compliance on pulmonary pressure is rarely considered. CASE PRESENTATION We report the echocardiographic case of a 9-year-old child who presented severe rheumatic mitral valve regurgitation with a giant left atrium, in contrast to a norma...

In two cases with a well-defined pulmonary capillary venous pressure pulse, the lobular pulmonary artery was occluded with a balloon while the pulmonary capillary venous pressure was registered. There was no change in the tracing obtained. In two other cases positive pressure respiration almost completely damped out the pulmonary capillary venous pressure variations, but the mean pressure remai...

Ventricular dysfunction, elevated pulmonary vascular resistance, and residual distal pulmonary artery distortion contribute to early mortality after a Fontan operation; they may be transient or reversible. A baffle fenestration, allowing right-to-left shunting, maintains cardiac output and limits right atrial pressure. A baffle fenestration was surgically created at the time of a modified Fonta...

Adolescent, 13 yrs, with slight fatigue and cyanosis since birth. No heart failure, oxygen saturation > 80% and continuous murmur +/++ at the inferior left sternal border. Chest x-ray showed higher caliber vessels to the left. Left pulmonary artery hypertension (90/45-60 mm Hg and 7.8 UW) and normotension to the right (20 mm Hg, 1.8 UW). Left pulmonary artery originated from the ascending aorta...

Dexamethasone ameliorates the severity of acute mountain sickness (AMS) but it is unknown whether it obtunds normal physiological responses to hypoxia. We studied whether dexamethasone enhanced or inhibited the ventilatory, cardiovascular, and pulmonary vascular responses to sustained (8 h) hypoxia. Eight healthy volunteers were studied, each on four separate occasions, permitting four differen...

We banded the left pulmonary artery in rats to investigate, in the same animal, the effect of both increased and decreased flow on the lung vasculature and to determine how these hemodynamic states modify the structural changes produced by a 2-week exposure to hypobaric hypoxia. In unanesthetized rats, pressures were recorded from the main pulmonary artery and aorta via indwelling catheters, ca...

Right ventricular function at rest and during exercise was examined in a group of patients with symptomatic aortic or mitral valve disease, or both. The right ventricular ejection fraction was less than 45% in 22 of 36 patients at rest and in 12 of 17 subjects at symptom-limited, supine bicycle exercise. The right ventricular ejection fraction failed to increase more than 5% with exercise in 17...

Peak systolic pulmonary valvar pressure gradients are frequently seen in large intracardiac left-to-right shunt lesions. Conventionally, this has been attributed to "relative" pulmonic stenosis. Theoretical considerations suggest that this gradient is due to differences in expression of the total fluid energy. The side pressure, the downstream pressure, the end pressure, and the flow velocity i...

Computed tomography (CT) is widely used for evaluation of lung diseases. To evaluate the value of CT measurement of pulmonary artery for diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and its comorbidity pulmonary hypertension (PH), we retrospectively reviewed the CT of 221 patients with COPD and 115 control patients without cardiovascular or lung disease. Patients with COPD were div...

The interrelationship of hydrostatic pressure and osmotic forces across the capillary membrane are described by the Starling equation [lo]. Increasing pulmonary capillary hydrostatic pressure is a cause of pulmonary edema 131. Pulmonary edema develops at a lower hydrostatic pressure when plasma colloid oncotic pressure is lowered suggesting that the gradient between colloid oncotic pressure (CO...