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Gas exchange is the physical process by which gases move passively by diffusion across a surface. For example, this surface might be the air/water interface of a water body, the surface of a gas bubble in a liquid, a gas-permeable membrane, or a biological membrane that forms the boundary between an organism and its extracellular environment.
Dead space reduces the amount of fresh breathing gas which reaches the alveoli during each breath. This reduces the oxygen available for gas exchange, and the amount of carbon dioxide that can be removed. The buildup of carbon dioxide is usually the more noticeable effect unless the breathing gas is hypoxic as occurs at high altitude.
The anatomy of the airways means inspired air must pass through the mouth, trachea, bronchi and bronchioles (anatomical dead space) before it gets to the alveoli where gas exchange will occur; on exhalation, alveolar gas must return along the same path, and so the exhaled sample will be purely alveolar only after a 500 to 1,000 ml of gas has ...
Inert gas continues to be taken up until the gas dissolved in the tissues is in a state of equilibrium with the gas in the lungs (see: "Saturation diving"), or the ambient pressure is reduced until the inert gases dissolved in the tissues are at a higher concentration than the equilibrium state, and start diffusing out again.
This matching may be assessed in the lung as a whole, or in individual or in sub-groups of gas-exchanging units in the lung. On the other side Ventilation-perfusion mismatch is the term used when the ventilation and the perfusion of a gas exchanging unit are not matched. The actual values in the lung vary depending on the position within the lung.
The atmospheric pressure is roughly equal to the sum of partial pressures of constituent gases – oxygen, nitrogen, argon, water vapor, carbon dioxide, etc.. In a mixture of gases, each constituent gas has a partial pressure which is the notional pressure of that constituent gas as if it alone occupied the entire volume of the original mixture at the same temperature. [1]
A comparison between the operations and effects of a cocurrent and a countercurrent flow exchange system is depicted by the upper and lower diagrams respectively. In both, it is assumed that red has a higher value (e.g. of temperature or the partial pressure of a gas) than blue and that the property being transported in the channels, therefore ...
Minute ventilation (or respiratory minute volume or minute volume) is the volume of gas inhaled (inhaled minute volume) or exhaled (exhaled minute volume) from a person's lungs per minute. It is an important parameter in respiratory medicine due to its relationship with blood carbon dioxide levels. It can be measured with devices such as a ...