obesity-hypoventilation syndrome

A complication of extreme obesity, which is characterised by marked cardiovascular compromise, decreased tidal and expiratory reserve volumes, alveolar hypoventilation, hypoxia, cyanosis and hypercapnia, if severe and prolonged, dyspnoea, polycythemia, cardiac hypertrophy, pulmonary hypertension, pulmonary oedema, congestive heart failure, extreme somnolence, obstructive sleep apnea syndrome; O2 therapy may be fatal, as it removes the chemoreceptor drive needed for respiratory movement

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obesity-hypoventilation syndrome

Pickwick syndrome, see there.

McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

pick·wick·i·an syn·drome

(pik-wik'ē-ăn sin'drōm)

A combination of severe, grotesque obesity, somnolence, and general debility, theoretically resulting from hypoventilation induced by the obesity; hypercapnia, pulmonary hypertension, and cor pulmonale can result.

[after the "fat boy" character in Dickens' early novel The Pickwick Papers]

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