Recent prolongation of human age has led to a remarkable increase of the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (C. O. P. D.). Such patients are accompanied with more or less respiratory insufficiency, the degree of which is clinically important to be grasped. Further, whether they have been fallen into hypercapnia cver moderate degree or not, is a matter of significance for their prognostic judgement. For that, needless to say, it is best to make a frequent arterial blood gas analysis, which, however cannot be entirely non-invasive, so that a simpler method would have a clear advantage. From this point of view EKG findings key to the diagnosis of hypercapnia were energetically searched for by comparative study between arterial blood gas analytical values and EKG findings obtained in 41 cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In such disease patients without primary heart disease, changes in EKG pattern were caused by the pulmonary hypertension due to hypoxia accompanying an alteration in the right ventricular hemodynamics, and their EKG findings were variable with considerable reversibility. That is to say:
1) In the C. O. P. D., patients the negativeness of T wave in V
1 lead was suggestive of a hypercapnic condition while in normal subjects it was positive in principle.
2) As the hypoxemia and hypercapnia were enhanced, the incidence of pulmonary P became higher, but it was difficult to judge the point of time at which a transition has been made to hypercapnia by referring to pulmonal P.
3) In the C. O. P. D. patients, both the pulmonary P and negativeness of T wave in V
1 lead were presumedly attributed mainly to a pulmonary hypertension due to alveolar hypoxic vascular contraction, the changes in T wave being reversible in many cases. Irreversible change in T wave coincided with that in right ventricle with severe respiratory insufficiency.
4) Seeing that in the C. O. P. D., while EKG was presenting reversible changes, arterial blood gas analytical findings and T wave in V
1 lead varied with a comparatively good relationship, so that EKG findings can make it possible to judge, to some extent, the degree of possible respiratory insufficiency and especially the point of time at which a transition has been made from the respiratory insufficiency to hypercapnia.
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