Processes Involved In Pulmonary Ventilation: Explanation And Key Concepts

Write to Explain the processes involved in pulmonary ventilation.

Pulmonary Ventilation

Pulmonary ventilation can also be known as breathing process. Breathing is a process which involves inhaling and exhaling of air from and to the atmosphere. Atmospheric air consists of mixture of air from which one of them is oxygen. The oxygen is taken by our body which is responsible for many processes inside the body. Oxygen is taken from the air into the lungs and carbon dioxide is exhaled out of the body. This exchange of gases takes place due to famous universal phenomena or it can be said by law of low and high pressure. It states that air is inhaled with a high pressure in lungs. And this takes place inside the lungs of human body or any other animal as well. Air is taken inside the lungs due to the creation of low pressure inside the lungs and exhaled out because this pressure becomes more inside the lungs as compared to the outside atmospheric pressure. So, in this paper the discussion will be made on the topic “processes involved in pulmonary ventilation”.

This difference of pressure is created due to contraction and expansion of the organ called “diaphragm”. When the diaphragm expands it creates a region of low pressure inside the lungs and the air from atmosphere is taken inside the lungs and this air is oxygen.  This intake of oxygen from the atmosphere is called inspiration process and releasing of carbon dioxide to atmosphere is called expiration. The air containing oxygen is taken into the body to the lungs and passes through various organs, and also passes through some of the tiny hairs which serves as the filters of the air going into the lungs (Mayo et al., 2016). Air is taken in through mouth or nose or through nasal cavity which consists of these tiny hairs. In this the air and dust got filtered and most of the unwanted particles are filtered. These hairs which are situated in the nasal cavity are commonly known as cilia. After passing through the nasal cavity and cilia the air is passed through wind pipe which is inside our neck and then finally into the lungs (Wallden, 2017).

Diaphragm and lungs serve as the most important organs during respiration process.  When the diaphragm contracts it makes the lungs to expand hence creating a low-pressure region inside the lungs. The condition of pressure gradient is created and the air from the outside atmosphere is taken inside the lungs. Totally opposite process takes place in expiration process. In expiration, the diaphragm expands and it squeeze the lungs (Párraga, Moore and Fahlman, 2018). Hence causing a high-pressure region inside the lungs can results in the exhalation of air inside the lungs to the atmosphere.  This expiration process in which diaphragm expansion takes place is not a process which is to be taken in particular because after the expansion of diaphragm and inspiration process of air, the diaphragm muscles will go to its original position, and this only causes the expansion condition of the diaphragm muscle and hence causes the lungs to contract and creating a high-pressure region (Amado-Rodríguez et al., 2017).

The Role of Diaphragm and Lungs in Respiration

The first key concept is related with respiration process in relation to the process involved in pulmonary ventilation. It takes place in normal condition. But what happens when a person is running or doing exercise or some other work. While doing activities like exercising or running there is an increase in the demand of oxygen inside the body and hence, there is an increase in the rate of respiration (Kenney, Wilmore and Costill, 2015).  So, it can be stated that how does our body manages to fulfil this requirement of more oxygen inside the body during activities like running and doing exercising, and also what all are the organs that helps in maintaining the proper rate of inspiration as per the requirement of the body. Intercoastal muscles are the organs which helps our body to deal with such conditions, these muscles lift up and expands the ribs of our body when the rate of respiration is increased. This lifting and expanding of ribs allow more air to enter the lungs which helps to fulfill the proper requirement of oxygen inside the body. So, whenever there is a need of increasing the amount of oxygen to be inhaled in, intercoastal muscles come into action to fulfill the demands (Graziottin and Gambini, 2015).

The respiration rate is the number of times the human inhale and exhale air from the lungs per min. The respiration rate is between 12 to 20. This a rate of respiration when a person is at rest. This means that when a person is totally at a state of rest, he or she breathes 12 to 20 times or inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide 12 to 20 times within a minute. It has been analyzed that the estimated time is taken by different respiration organs or the work done by the organs to inhale oxygen from atmosphere and transfer it to different body parts and exhale carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere (Thomas, Mann and Williams, 2018). But if a person is having a rate of respiration below 12 or above 25 breaths per minute then in this condition it can be said to be considered as abnormal and these are the cases of diseases the asthama, pneumonia, heart attack and lung diseases. These are the diseases which can take place due to intake of heavy dose of alcohol, drugs, and other such intoxicating things. Air pollution can also be the big reason of abnormal respiratory rate (Whitsett and Weaver, 2015). 

The second key concept is related with the “mechanism behind the pulmonary ventilation system”. The main mechanism behind the pulmonary ventilation is defined by the law which is given by famous and known boyle’s law. This law states that pressure and volume are inversely proportional to each other, this means that whenever there is an increase in volume the pressure will be decreased and if the pressure is increased it will result in decrease in the volume (Lee et al., 2017).  And this happens in lungs as well whenever the lungs of our body contract the volume is decreased this means increase in pressure and hence air in form of carbon dioxide is exhaled to atmosphere and similarly when the lungs expand there is a decrease in pressure and hence the air is inhaled inside the lungs (Rutty et al., 2015). There are commonly three types of pressure which are analyzed in respiration system. These pressures are atmospheric pressure, intra-alveolar and inter-pleural. Atmospheric pressure is the pressure of the air surrounding our environment, intra-alveolar pressure is the pressure that is exerted by the air inside the lungs and inter-pleural is the pressure of air inside pleural cavity (Levin, Schiebler and Hopkins, 2017).

The third key concept is related with “terminologies which are used in pulmonary ventilation”. The terminologies are, respiration volume and capacity. The respiratory volume is further sub divided into tidal volume, expiratory reserve and inspiratory reserve volume. The volume of air that enters inside the lungs from the atmosphere during inspiration process is called tidal volume. Tidal volume is taken into the consideration when the breathing is done in quite state or no exertion is done by the body, whereas expiratory reserve volume is the amount of air which a person exhale above the tidal volume in case of exertion and inspiratory reserve volume is the amount. Also, there is one more type which is called as residual volume and it is considered as the amount of air left inside the lungs when all the air has been exhaled (Baumgardner and Hedenstierna, 2016).  

References

Amado-Rodríguez, L., Del Busto, C., García-Prieto, E. and Albaiceta, G.M., 2017. Mechanical ventilation in acute respiratory distress syndrome: The open lung revisited. Medicina intensiva, 41(9), pp.550-558.

Baumgardner, J.E. and Hedenstierna, G., 2016. Ventilation/perfusion distributions revisited. Current Opinion in Anesthesiology, 29(1), pp.2-7.

Graziottin, A. and Gambini, D., 2015. Anatomy and physiology of genital organs–women. In Handbook of clinical neurology(Vol. 130, pp. 39-60). Elsevier.

Kenney, W.L., Wilmore, J. and Costill, D., 2015. Physiology of sport and exercise 6th edition. Human kinetics.

Lee, S.W., Lee, S.M., Shin, S.Y., Park, T.S., Oh, S.Y., Kim, N., Hong, Y., Lee, J.S., Oh, Y.M., Lee, S.D. and Seo, J.B., 2017. Improvement in ventilation-perfusion mismatch after Bronchoscopic lung volume reduction: quantitative image analysis. Radiology, 285(1), pp.250-260.

Levin, D.L., Schiebler, M.L. and Hopkins, S.R., 2017. Physiology for the pulmonary functional imager. European journal of radiology, 86(8), pp.308-312.

Mayo, P., Volpicelli, G., Lerolle, N., Schreiber, A., Doelken, P. and Vieillard-Baron, A., 2016. Ultrasonography evaluation during the weaning process: the heart, the diaphragm, the pleura and the lung. Intensive care medicine, 42(7), pp.1107-1117.

Párraga, D.G., Moore, M. and Fahlman, A., 2018. Pulmonary ventilation–perfusion mismatch: a novel hypothesis for how diving vertebrates may avoid the bends. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1877),pp.56.

Rutty, G.N., Biggs, M.J., Brough, A., Robinson, C., Mistry, R., Amoroso, J., Deshpande, A. and Morgan, B., 2015. Ventilated post-mortem computed tomography through the use of a definitive airway. International journal of legal medicine, 129(2), pp.325-334.

Thomas, K.S., Mann, A. and Williams, J., 2018. Pulmonary (V/Q) Imaging. Journal of nuclear medicine technology, 46(2), pp.87-88.

Wallden, M., 2017. The diaphragm–More than an inspired design. Journal of bodywork and movement therapies, 21(2), pp.342-349.

Whitsett, J.A. and Weaver, T.E., 2015. Alveolar development and disease. American journal of respiratory cell and molecular biology, 53(1), pp.1-7.