The coronary circulation is central to sustaining myocardial viability. Unlike the cir culations of most other organs, if the coronary circulation becomes insufficient to sustain myocardial contractile function, overall quality of life rapidly declines and life can abruptly end. In partnership with the cerebral circulation, the coronary circula tion plays a central role in sustaining life. However, unlike the cerebral circulation, whose function is self-sufficient to define life, the coronary circulation determines global blood flow and thus the initial state for the remainder of the body....

This monograph focuses on splanchnic function in health and disease. It represents a distillate of the communication that took place at the First International Symposium of Applied Physiol ogy of the Peripheral Circulation, "Splanchnic Circulation: No Longer a Silent Partner." The individual chapters roughly follow the individual presentations and display in durable form the con cepts and importance that this symposium achieved. The concept for this annual symposium was the child of An tonio Artigas, who not only recruited sponsorship but also Jean Francois Dhainaut and me to help with the...