Evidence for Increased Venous Tone in Chronic Congestive Heart Failure

Because venous tone is such an important, unsolved problem concerned with hemodynamic phenomena in congestive heart failure, it was considered desirable to present thoughts and experimental investigations on this subject. The early, important studies of McMichael and Sharpey-Schafer 1 and Starr and Rawson 2 on venous tone in congestive heart failure, as well as the opposing investigations of others,* should be studied by all. Definitions Congestive heart failure is a clinical syndrome associated with failure of the heart as a pump. The clinical pattern of ascites, hepatomegaly, generalized systemic venous hypertension, anasarca, bilateral pulmonary basal rales, dyspnea, and other symptoms and signs may have several etiologic associations, but the congestive type of failure of the heart should be considered the cause only when this syndrome is produced by or associated with failure of the heart to pump adequate quantities of blood to the tissues. According to this definition, therefore,