Heart-Lung Interactions in Aerospace Medicine

Few of the heart-lung interactions that are discussed have been studied in any detail in the aerospace environment, but is seems that many such interactions must occur in the setting of altered accelerative loadings and pressure breathing. That few investigations are in progress suggests that clinical and academic laboratory investigators and aerospace organizations are further apart than during the pioneering work on pressure breathing and acceleration tolerance in the 1940s. The purpose is to reintroduce some of the perennial problems of aviation physiology as well as some newer aerospace concerns that may be of interest. Many possible heart-lung interactions are pondered, by necessity often drawing on data from within the aviation field, collected before the modern understanding of these interactions developed, or on recent laboratory data that may not be strictly applicable. In the field of zero-gravity effects, speculation inevitably outruns the sparse available data.