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At present in the practice of radionuclide methods of investigation of the ventilation and blood flow one mistakes either a regional ventilated volume or the rate of indicator clearance from a given region for regional alveolar ventilation. The regional ventilation-perfusion ratio is obtained by dividing corresponding values expressed not in absolute but in relative units that causes erroneous results. A method proposed in this paper makes it possible to calculate regional distributions of ventilation, perfusion and their ratio as won as the values of mean time and the passage of an indicator through the alveolar-bronchial space and the vascular bed of the lungs strictly in accordance with the conditions of the clinical physiology of respiration. Measurements were taken according to an established method using either a gamma-chamber or a radiographic unit with autonomous detectors. To study the regional blood flow, 133Xe and 99mTc-MAA can be used. An assumption of preserving the persistence of the general ventilation-perfusion ratio for the lungs with any regional disturbances of this ratio should be attributed to the most serious allowances of this method.

Practical medicine needs a simple method for detecting the presence and severity of left ventricular insufficiency in acute myocardial infarction. Radiography of the lungs may help in solving this problem. Our idea of the X-ray picture of the lungs in pulmonary circulation congestion is now almost complete. The X-ray picture is determined by the degree of left ventricular insufficiency. The results of lung radiography of 225 patients admitted to the intensive care department for acute myocardial infarction are discussed. Alveolar pulmonary edema was diagnosed in 22.7%, interstitial pulmonary edema in 42.7%, pulmonary plethora in 27%, and mild abnormalities in 7.6% of cases. Comparison of the findings of clinical and X-ray examination in 111 patients showed that severe disorders of pulmonary circulation are detected by the X-ray method four times more frequently.