Pulmonary veins in rheumatic heart disease.

In the current era of advances in cardiac surgery there is constant stimulation to increase our knowledge of cardiopulmonary physiology and further the contribution of radiology to evaluation of the cardiac patient. The changes produced in the lung fields by rheumatic valvular heart disease have been appreciated by the roentgenologist for years and have been recently summarized by Kerley. The pulmonary arteries have been studied intensively by Whitaker and Lodge in England and Jacobson, Schwartz, and Sussman, and others, in America. The pulmonary veins have received less attention. De Bettencourt, Saldanha, and Fragoso found them decreased in size as left atrial pressure increased. These workers observed no dilatation of the veins in mitral valvular disease and reported small veins in the presence of auricular fibrillation. As enlargement of the left atrium increased, they observed displacement and distortion of the veins and were unable to demonstrate them at all in the presence of giant left atria. Stei...