In his review of the Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Respiratory Muscles in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, organized in Montescano in 1986, Thomas K. Aldrich stated that "there is little information on nutrition." We felt that the need to supplement the evaluation of respiratory muscles by studying nutritional problems was an important enough matter to justify producing a specific study on the subject. This book is the result of the efforts made in this direction. Since 1986, many of the problems associated with nutrition and ventilatory function have been...

While emphysema and chronic bronchitis are primarily lung di seases, one of their major consequences is to deeply affect the function of the respiratory muscles. Lung hyperinflation shortens the inspiratory muscles due to increased airways resistance, more of their effort is demanded and changes in nutritional status wea ken them further. Their malfunction can lead to severe dyspnea and to failure of the ventilatory pump. Over the last 10 years we have witnessed an explosion of information of how respiratory muscles function in health and disease, new techniques for their evaluation have been...