Research centering on blood flow in the heart continues to hold an important position, especially since a better understanding of the subject may help reduce the incidence of coronary arterial disease and heart attacks. This book summarizes recent advances in the field; it is the product of fruitful cooperation among international scientists who met in Japan in May, 1990 to discuss the regulation of coronary blood flow.

This presentation describes various aspects of the regulation of tissue oxygenation, including the roles of the circulatory system, respiratory system, and blood, the carrier of oxygen within these components of the cardiorespiratory system. The respiratory system takes oxygen from the atmosphere and transports it by diffusion from the air in the alveoli to the blood flowing through the pulmonary capillaries. The cardiovascular system then moves the oxygenated blood from the heart to the microcirculation of the various organs by convection, where oxygen is released from hemoglobin in the red blood cells and moves to the parenchymal cells of each tissue by diffusion. Oxygen that has diffused into cells is then utilized in the mitochondria to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy currency of all cells. The mitochondria are able to produce ATP until the oxygen tension or PO2 on the cell surface falls to a critical level of about 4–5 mm Hg. Thus, in order to meet the energetic needs of cells, it is important to maintain a continuous supply of oxygen to the mitochondria at or above the critical PO2 . In order to accomplish this desired outcome, the cardiorespiratory system, including the blood, must be capable of regulation to ensure survival of all tissues under a wide range of circumstances. The purpose of this presentation is to provide basic information about the operation and regulation of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, as well as the properties of the blood and parenchymal cells, so that a fundamental understanding of the regulation of tissue oxygenation is achieved.

An Introduction to Cardiovascular Physiology is designed primarily for students of medicine and physiology. This introductory text is mostly didactic in teaching style and it attempts to show that knowledge of the circulatory system is derived from experimental observations. This book is organized into 15 chapters. The chapters provide a fuller account of microvascular physiology to reflect the explosion of microvascular research and include a discussion of the fundamental function of the cardiovascular system involving the transfer of nutrients from plasma to the tissue. They also cover major advances in cardiovascular physiology including biochemical events underlying Starling's law of the heart, nonadrenergic, non-cholinergic neurotransmission, the discovery of new vasoactive substances produced by endothelium and the novel concepts on the organization of the central nervous control of the circulation. This book is intended to medicine and physiology students.

A comprehensive review of all the latest developments in cardiac electrophysiology, focusing on both the clinical and experimental aspects of ventricular repolarization, including newly discovered clinical repolarization syndromes, electrocardiographic phenomena, and their correlation with the most recent advances in basic science. The authors illuminate the basic electrophysiologic, molecular, and pharmacologic mechanisms underlying ventricular repolarization, relate them to specific disease conditions, and examine the future of antiarrhythmic drug development based on both molecular and electrophysiological properties. They also fully review the clinical presentation and management of specific cardiac repolarization conditions.

Easily understood, up-to-date and clinically relevant, this book provides junior anaesthetists with an essential physiology resource.