STUDIES IN CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE: II. The Respiratory Exchange During and After Exercise.

Four of the patients who were studied suffered from hypertensive heart disease. Two of these had auricular fibrillation, a third had frequent ectopic beats without pulse deficit and the fourth regular rhythm. One subject had rheumatic heart disease with mitral stenosis. All the patients mentioned above were more or less "decompensated" when the experiments were performed and all of them had had one or more previous severe "breaks" in compensation. These individuals with chronic congestive failure were chosen because it is in such patients that one usually observes progressive inability to perform muscular work, and the object of this study has been to find the reason for this change. In addition, one cardiac patient who had never been "decompensated" was studied. This man had hypertension and syphilitic aortic insufficiency with moderate dyspnea on exertion. He also had diabetes mellitus. Observations were made on this patient during and after standing-running, as on the normal subjects.