Clinical aspects of cardio-respiratory homeostasis

Starting from general assumptions on the clinical aspects of homeostasis and on the functional correlations lung-heart in physiological and pathological states, the difficulty to diagnose an individual pulmonary heart disease is stressed, as well as the necessity to differentiate it from the cases of coronary heart disease, when respiratory failure aggravates the latent cardiac ischemia and induces a global cardiac failure. The diagnosis criteria of the two distinct pathological pictures are established, emphasizing the importance of this differentiation for clinical practice and epidemiological research.