Publisher's Synopsis
The book describes Dr. Sevelius' long career as medical scientist, pursuing specifically what can be learned from a radiocardiogram (RCG), the recording through the skin of the heart flow, the cardiac output (CO), the most fundamental of all body functions. The RCG has been slow in acceptance in clinical medicine. One worry has been the radiation. The radiation is approximately one-third that of a chest x-ray and should be of minor concern with proper education. Another difficulty is how to interpret the results. Other techniques for CO measurements have had similar problems, not because the techniques were wrong but because the interpretation was based on wrong premises with too wide a standard deviation for proper diagnosis in clinical work. Dr. Sevelius introduces two new assessments: hemodynamic and metabolic. With these interpretations the heart as a pump is first judged according to the size of simultaneously measured blood volume it has to pump and second, separately, as to how large a body the heart has to supply with oxygen. The hemodynamic evaluation of the heart flow is found to be a good predictor to a within six-month pending heart attack. This would make the RCG an exceptionally simple and useful tool for diagnosis in clinical medicine. This book collects Dr. Sevelius' work in digital format to make it easily available. It is Dr. Sevelius' hope that his work will inspire some young scientists to follow up his work because of its wide application in modern medicine.
