The lymphatic vessels of the lung provide an important route for clearance of interstitial edema fluid filtered from pulmonary blood vessels. However, the importance of lung lymphatics for the removal of airway liquid filtered from the systemic circulation of the lung has not been demonstrated. We studied the contribution of the bronchial vasculature to lung lymph flow in anesthetized, ventilat...

ALTHOUGH chronic fibrous mediastinitis is responsible for 8 to 23% of the cases of superior vena caval obstruction,1-7 it may also compress or obstruct other mediastinal structures. Involvement of the tracheobron-chial tree" 8, 9pulmonary artery,10-12 esophagus ," 9, 13 aorta, and coronary arteries14 has been reported. Obstruction of pulmonary veins, however, is uncommon and may not be recogniz...

Tantalum bronchography was performed on 22 left lungs obtained at necropsy. Seven were from patients dying in cor pulmonale as a result of chronic airways obstruction and 15 were from unselected necropsies. Of the latter group, nine had no evidence of respiratory disease and six had pathological changes of emphysema and bronchial mucous gland enlargement when the lungs were examined following f...

Cooling intrathoracic airways by filling the pulmonary circulation with cold blood alters pulmonary mechanoreceptor discharge. To determine whether this initiates reflex changes that could contribute to airway obstruction, we measured changes in tracheal smooth muscle tension and bronchial arterial flow evoked by cooling. In nine chloralose-anesthetized open-chest dogs, the right pulmonary arte...

Interest in atelectasis has in recent years been revived by the increased recognition of its frequency. It has been demonstrated that complete obstruction of the air passage supplying a unit of the lung which does not also communicate with another air passage will produce atelectasis.'3 It has been shown4 that this is due to absorption by the body fluids of the gases contained in that part of t...