More than 140 million people worldwide live >2500 m above sea level. Of them, 80 million live in Asia, and 35 million live in the Andean mountains. This latter region has its major population density living above 3500 m. The primary objective of the present study is to review the physiology, pathology, pathogenesis, and clinical features of the heart and pulmonary circulation in healthy highlan...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE High-altitude headache is the primary symptom associated with acute mountain sickness, which may be caused by nitric oxide-mediated activation of the trigeminovascular system. Therefore, the present study examined the effects of inspiratory hypoxia on the transcerebral exchange kinetics of the vasoactive molecules, nitrite (NO(2)(*)), and calcitonin gene-related peptide (...

1. To investigate the mechanisms of acute mountain sickness, 22 subjects travelled to 3100 m by road and the following day walked to 4300 m on Mount Kenya. Control measurements were made over 2 days at 1300 m before ascent and for 2 days after arrival at 4300 m. These included body weight, 24 h urine volume, 24 h sodium and potassium excretion, blood haemoglobin, packed cell volume, and symptom...

Background. Symptoms of mountain sickness are due to hypoxia of the brain. The pathogenesis is complex, but acid-base disturbances certainly play a role. When arterial oxygen levels drop, hyperventilation is induced, resulting in a respiratory alkalosis. However, this alkalosis inhibits the hyperventilation necessary for maintaining oxygen pressure. We present a case of a patient with symptoms ...

Introduction: Chronic mountain sickness (CMS) represents a syndrome of secondary polycythemia along with thrombocytopenia, altered hemorheology, pulmonary and systemic hypertension, and congestive heart failure, occurring due to hypobaric hypoxia-anoxia-induced erythropoiesis reported in both native mountain residents and new climbers after prolonged stays at high and extreme a...

In this paper we consider the Monge-Ampère equation det(D2u) = f(x) in a convex domain Ω ⊂ IRn subject to the Dirichlet boundary condition u = φ on ∂Ω. We prove that if ∂Ω and φ are C3 smooth, then the solution u ∈ C2+α(Ω). We also give examples to show that if ∂Ω or φ is only C2,1 smooth, the solution may fail to be C2 smooth near the boundary.

We construct a special plurisubharmonic defining function for a smoothly bounded strictly pseudoconvex domain so that the determinant of the complex Hessian vanishes to high order on the boundary. This construction, coupled with regularity of solutions of complex Monge-Ampére equation and the reflection principle, enables us to give a new proof of the Fefferman mapping theorem.