COR PULMONALE

A SMALL PROPORTION of patients suffer-ing from chronic bronchitis and emphysema eventually develop congestive cardiac failure secondary to their chest disease (cor pulmonale). A considerable number of studies of this condition have been made, but most have been made on patients seen for the first time after cardiac failure has developed. Very few studies have been made in the same patients before and after the onset of failure, presumably because it is difficult for anyone group of observers to witness the onset of failure in a large enough series of patients. Such a study could be carried out adequately only in a clinic where patients with chronic chest disease can be observed over a period of many years. M. M. Platts, .T. D. S. Hammond and C. H. Stuart-Harris' have recently carried out such a survey over an eight-year period in a group of patients attending a clinic for chronic chest diseases at the Royal Hospital, Sheffield.