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A tribute: Abel Ayerza and pulmonary hypertension

2011; European Respiratory Society; Volume: 20; Issue: 122 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1183/09059180.00006811

1600-0617

Juan Antonio Mazzei, Mariano E. Mazzei,

Glycogen Storage Diseases and Myoclonus

In the history of research on pulmonary hypertension, one of the key landmarks was the clinical description of the disease, which was made in 1901 by Abel Ayerza. From then on, in the international medical literature (especially the French, British and American literature), so-called “Ayerza's disease” encompassed various aetiological forms of pulmonary hypertension, discriminated today thanks to developments in the understanding of this disease and its current classification. Abel Ayerza was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1861. After achieving a doctorate with a gold medal in 1886 from the School of Medicine at the University of Buenos Aries, he travelled to Paris, France where he specialised with Jean Martin Charcot and Francois Joseph Babinski at the Hopital de la Salpetriere, Pierre Carl Edouard Potain at the Hopital de la Charite and Francois Sigismond Jaccoud at the Hopital de la Pitie. On his return to Argentina, he joined the Hospital de Clinicas at the University of Buenos Aires, where, at the age of 37, he was appointed Professor of the First Chair of Medicine. Figure 1. Portrait of Dr Abel Ayerza (courtesy of the Ayerza family). On August 20, 1901, Dr Ayerza described a patient with a history of chronic cough and sputum, dyspnoea, severe cyanosis, profound daytime sleepiness and manifestations of right heart failure. The patient was a 38-yr-old male who had suffered from pneumonia at 20 and 32 yrs of age and since then had had respiratory symptoms. Dyspnoea was severe at rest and there was central cyanosis, clubbed fingers and tachypnea. In …