CVPR Week 5: Pulmonary embryology

Question 1

Pseudoglandular period pulmonary structure

Answer 1

• Lungs resemble a gland
• Branching to the level of the terminal bronchioles
• no respiratory bronchioles or alveoli present

Question 2

Babies born before 16 weeks cannot survive because?

Answer 2

No respiratory or alveoli are yet present

Question 3

Fetal respiration description

Answer 3

Fetal breathing movements occur in utero

Question 4

Fetal respiration mechanism

Answer 4

• Baby aspirates amniotic fluid and amniotic fluid fills the alveoli that have developed

Question 5

Importance of fetal respiration

Answer 5

• stimulates further lung development
• growth of the respiratory muscles
• very important during the pseudoglandular phase in order for amniotic fluid to fill up the lung that has developed so far to stimulate further growth into the more mature lung (pathology in oligohydramnios)

Question 6

Oligohydramnios description and association

Answer 6

• babies born with pulmonary hypoplasia
• Part of Potter’s Sequence
• Caused by fetal kidney abnormalities which produce the amniotic fluid so that mother will have decreased amniotic fluid and one of the consequences of this is failure for the fetus’s lungs to fully develop

Question 7

Oligohydramnios associations

Answer 7

Part of Potter’s Sequence