Bleeding ponies, bloated cattle and breathless mountaineers: hearts and lungs under duress with hypoxia and exercise

Erik R Swenson is a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth School of Medicine in Hanover, NH. He is currently editor-in-chief of High Altitude Medicine and Biology and section editor for the Clinical Pulmonologist of the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. His interests beyond pulmonary and critical care medicine include high altitude and wilderness medicine, exercise, and respiratory physiology and pharmacology. Dr. Swenson graduated from Princeton University in 1974 with an AB in biochemistry and then received his MD from the University of California, San Diego in 1979. He then completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1983. Thereafter he completed 4 years of fellowship training in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Washington and at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London, England. He was then appointed to the faculty in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington. He was invited to be a visiting professor from 1996 to 1997 in the Division of Sports and Performance Medicine of the University of Heidelberg, Germany. For over 35 years he has been a principal investigator at the Mt Desert Island Biological Laboratory, a marine station on the coast of Maine. His research interests include the integrative physiology of humans and animals living in different and extreme environments. Over his career he has had an abiding interest in high altitude medicine with studies focusing on acute mountain sickness and high altitude pulmonary edema, including performing bronchoscopy, echocardiography, exercise testing, cellular studies and drug trials on Mt Denali, in Alaska, the Andes, the Alps, the Himalayas and in the Rocky mountains. Another major area of interest considerably overlapping with his high altitude studies has been the investigation of carbonic anhydrase and its inhibitors, such as acetazolamide, in a variety of organ systems in many creatures, and in the many ways that acetazolamide is useful in prevention and treatment of high altitude illnesses.