Disturbances of pulmonary function after acute myocardial infarction.

and observations of our own (Sloman et al., 1966) have shown a high incidence of arterial hypoxaemia in patients studied after myocardial infarction.McNicol et al. suggested that pulmonary congestion with venoarterial shunting was the basic cause of this hypoxaemia and that treatment with diuretics would improve blood oxygenation presumably by removing transudated fluid from the lungs.This paper reports studies carried out in an attempt to further elucidate the mechanisms responsible for disturbed pulmonary function after myocardial infarction.Measurements of arterial blood gases, uniformity of ventilation, ventilation-perfusion relations, and pulmonary haemodynamics were made shortly after the onset of myocardial infarction.