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This book has grown from the authors' experience in treating patients in the Respiratory Unit and in other units of the Massachusetts General Hospital. As a textbook it is a model for the application of physiologic principles to clinical medicine. As a practical manual it presents a wealth of detailed, useful information in compact form.
The book is organized in five parts: physiologic considerations, diagnosis, prevention, therapy, and special problems. The section on physiologic considerations presents the principles of oxygen and carbon dioxide transport and emphasizes the relationship between pulmonary ventilation and perfusion as a major problem in respiratory insufficiency. The usual, tiresome discussion of lung volumes and gas diffusion is omitted. The relationship of ventilation to perfusion is again emphasized in the section on diagnosis. The methods of calculating dead space and physiologic shunting are given, and the techniques and usefulness of blood gas and acid-base measurements are detailed.