Healthy Heart and Lungs Week 2 Flashcards
Explain the mechanism for matching ventilation and perfusion?
Define ventilation?
Define Perfusion?
What is ventilation perfusion matching ?
- Ventilation (V) is the amount of gas that can move into and out of the alveolus that can participate in gas exchange
- Perfusion (Q) is the amount of blood in the alveolar capillaries, moving past the alveolus that can participate in gas exchange
The efficiency of gas exchange concerns both ventilation and perfusion.
- Ventilation perfusion matching is also known as ventilation perfusion coupling or ventilation perfusion ratio. We want the V/V ratio to be as close to 1/1 as possible. Its called matching because if V goes up Q goes up.
What is the mean ventilation - perfusion ratio in a healthy individual ?
In a healthy resting adult 4 L of air ventilate the alveoli (V) and 5L of blood pass through the lungs (Q) each minute.
Hence the mean ventilation – perfusion ratio (V/Q) is 4/5 or 0.8
What is the minute volume ?
What is the equation to work out minute volume ?
Minute Volume: Volume of air entering and leaving the lungs each minute. This is the same as pulmonary ventilation
Minute Volume (MV) = Respiratory Rate (RR) x Tidal Volume (VT)
- The number does vary whether your female and male and whether you have respiratory conditions
What is Tidal Volume ?
Tidal volume is the amount of air that moves in or out of the lungs with each respiratory cycle. It measures around 500 mL in an average healthy adult male and approximately 400 mL in a healthy female.
So the amount of air that is taken in and out with each breath.
What is the respiratory rate ?
Respiratory rate: the number of breaths per minute.
As you go from baby to adult your respiratory rate decreases
What are the conducting zones and respiratory zones of the tracheobronchial tree?
Conductance zones: Bronchi, bronchioles, terminal bronchioles (1-16)
Respiratory zone: Respiratory bronchioles, alveolar ducts, alveolar sacs (17-23)
- Not all of the air we take into the lungs is available to be used for gas exchange. 1/3 of every breath is not used in humans
- we have something called dead space in the respiratory system and these are areas where gas exchange do not take place.
- we also have non-perfused alveolus were gas exchange does not take place this could be because of a lack of blood supply because of tissue damage. This is known as physiological dead space. This often increases in disease conditions
What is Tidal Volume ?
-Tidal volume: is the volume of air moved into or out of the lungs in one breath.
-Tidal Volume = dead space + volume of air entering alveoli (respiratory area).
-Pulmonary ventilation (minute volume) = Respiratory rate x Tidal Volume
Pulmonary ventilation is the amount of air we are getting into the lungs
- Alveolar ventilation = RR x ( VT- VD)
Alveolar ventilation is the amount of air we are getting into the alveoli for gas exchange.
How can ventilation be measured ?
- ventilation can be measured using spirometry.
You breathe into the tube. Air enters the drum. The drum rises and then the pen draws on the paper which gives our spirometer image.
- Inspiratory reserve volume: the amount above the tidal volume we can take in ( so when we ask patient to take a big breath in)
- Inspiratory capacity: is the inspiratory reserve volume and tidal volume.
Expiratory reserve volume: the amount of above the tidal volume we can breathe out. ( so when we ask patients to take a breathe out as fully as they can).
- We can never completely empty our lungs, not while we are still alive anyway.
Residual volume: is the volume of air that remains in a persons lungs after fully exhaling.. If we didn’t have residual volume we would have collapsed lungs.
Once you have lung damage or collapsed lungs and loss of alveoli the residual volume increases ( goes up and up) and the expiratory reserve volume decreases ( goes down and down).
- Vital capacity: Inspiratory capacity and Expiratory capacity. So the total amount of air we can forcefully inhale and exhale added together.
- Total lung capacity: if we fully emptied the lungs what the volume would be. ( theoretically no one can actually do this)
What is the capacity of air in the lung ?
Total lung capacity: Vital capacity ( forcefully inhale + forcefully exhale) + Residual Volume
Vital Capacity = Tidal volume + inspiratory reserve volume and expiratory reserve volume
Inspiratory Capacity: Tidal volume + Inspiratory reserve volume
Functional Residual Capacity: Expiratory Reserve Volume + Residual Volume
What is another way of measuring the amount of inhaled and exhaled air besides spirometry ?
- Another way of measuring the amount of inhaled and exhaled air is using Helium Dilution Method.
- Another name for helium dilution method is Plethysmography.
How it works:
- instead of air in the drum there is helium.
- We ask the patient to breathe in and out. The helium enters the lungs and we measure the change in the volume of helium.
How it works in practice ( Plethysmography):
- the patient sits in the chamber, which is then sealed.
- they breathe through the pneumotach.
- they first breathe normally so we can get their tidal volume.
- then we close the shutter so they cant breathe any air in (seems cruel but allows us to calculate key values).
- you then ask the patients to breathe in fully and measure the change in gas in the chamber. (this is possible because the chamber is sealed).
Why do we do Plethysmography? :
- Accessing the values (RV + FRC) for our lungs can tell us about chronic respiratory conditions such as emphysema and COPD.
Why does increased Residual Volume (RV) occur in patients with emphysema and COPD and asthma ?
- In the image you can see healthy and unhealthy alveoli.
-You can see the total lung capacity for both of the ECG have remained the same.
- However in the damaged alveoli (COPD) the Residual Volume has increased.
- Because of this the Vital Capacity (Tidal volume + inspiratory reserve volume and expiratory reserve volume) has decreased.
- Also the gradient of the graph has changed. In both healthy and damages alveoli patients the amount of time taken to take air in is relatively the same.
- However in the patient with damaged alveoli you can see it takes them much longer to breathe out compared to the healthy patient.
Another way we can test ventilatory function is using a Peak Flow Meter.
This is used to see if airways are obstructed. It’s very useful in monitoring asthma.
Useful measures:
- Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second (FEV1)
- Forced Vital Capacity ( FVC)
The ratio of both of these FEV1 and FVC is commonly used and it is expressed as a percentage (%).
- FEV1 and FVC are measured against predicted values
Normal PEFR is 75% - 80%
This does decrease significantly with an underlying condition.
Obstruction condition:
- could be emphysema or cystic fibrosis
- you can see the total lung capacity does not change much, however it takes a lot longer to reach this point of air in the lungs dur to the obstruction.
- So FEV1 is significantly reduced in patients with obstruction compared to normal patients.
Restricted condition:
- could be due to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or interstitial lung disease or motor neuron disease or obesity.
- we can see maximum inhalation is much lower ( take in a lot less air)
- FVC is significantly lower
What is a flow volume loop
What is the flow volume loop?
The flow-volume loop is a plot of inspiratory and expiratory flow (on the Y-axis) against volume (on the X-axis) during the performance of maximally forced inspiratory and expiratory maneuvers.
Changes in the contour of the loop can aid in the diagnosis and localization of airway obstruction.
First graph:
Obstruction curve -
Expiration curve: has shifted slightly to the left and has stretched significantly. So it takes a long time for expiration to complete compared to normal expiration
Restrictive-
Expiration curve: has shifted to the right. The flow volume loop is much narrower.
Our inspiratory has massively decreased
What is Boyle’s Law ?
Is a gas law that describes the relationship between pressure and volume of a confined gas.
Boyles Law: At a constant temperature (T) the volume (V) of a given quantity of gas is 1/ (inversely proportional) to the pressure (P) it exerts .
Inversely proportional is when one value increases the other decreases.
So in this case as the volume decreases the pressure increases.
- We use the equation (P1 x V1) = (P2 x V2). This is the equation we use when solving volume and pressure problems.
Boyles law graph shape ?
A question answered using Boyles law
What is Avogadro’s Law ?
Equal volume of gas at the same temperature and pressure contains the same number of molecules.
All 3 balloons contain exactly the same amount of molecules.
The number of molecules in one mole of gas is 6.02 x 10 (23)
What is Charles law ?
Charles Law is an experimental gas law that describes how gases tend to expand when heated.
At a constant pressure the volume of gas is proportional to its absolute temperature.
When we heat a gas the volume of the gas expands because the particles move away from each other
What is the Ideal Gas Law ?
We can use this equation to work out:
- pressure
- temperature
- Volume
- moles
( R = gas constant)
What is Grahams Law ?
- The rate of diffusion of a gas is inversely proportional to the square root of its molecular weight.
- This means a gas with a lower molecular weigh will diffuse more quickly than a gas with a higher molecular weight.
What is Henrys Law?
- The quantity of a gas that can dissolve in a fluid is equal to the partial pressure of the gas multiplied by the solubility coefficient.
- So some gases are more soluble than others. This is because oxygen is less soluble in water than a lot of other gases including caron dioxide.
What is Daltons Law of partial pressure ?