Statics of normal lung

摘要

Static volume-pressure curves of the excised lung were first obtained by Hutchinson [1] in 1949, who studied two human lungs immediately after death. Since then, many such studies on the lungs of different species have been reported, but adequate data pertaining to normal human lungs are still lacking. Accordingly, the lungs of other mammals will be used for purposes of illustration. Pressure-volume relationships vary somewhat among species and are dependent on experimental parameters such as temperature and prior volume history. When these sources of variability are held constant, however, volume--pressure relationships are almost precisely reproducible. Typical pressure-volume behaviour is illustrated in Fig. 1.