[Characteristics of the clinical course of post-infarct cardiac insufficiency].
Subsequent to an examination of 133 patients, made several years after transmural myocardial infarction sustained by them, features specific for the clinical course of post-infarction cardiac insufficiency are analyzed. The examination included studies of the hemodynamics, veloergometry, measurements of the end diastolic pressure in the left ventricle, ventriculography and selective coronaroangiography. A considerable proportion of patients with extensive infarction in their history were found to suffer from chronic left ventricle incompetence with recurrent attacks of cardiac asthma. In the development of congestive cardiac insufficiency along the larger circulation an important role plays a sharply diminished contractility of the left ventricle due to the presence of extensive areas of akinesia and, in individual cases, also because of mitralism of the heart.