Okay, so my mom had to go into the hospital to have some fluid removed from her left lung. (It’s a somewhat long story). Anyway, they took out a quart of fluid. That sounds like an awful lot to me. So, how much would the lung hold?
BTW, she’s awake and fine and the doc says it’s probably no big deal.
The max for both lungs is about 4 quarts, however, during normal breathing you only take in about half a quart at a time.
actally, total lung capacity is 6000ml
it is broken down to the following
Inspiratory reserve volume (amount you can take in if you breath in all you can) is 3100ml
tital volume (air you move during normal ventlation) is about 500ml
expratory reserve volume (amount of air you can forceably exhale) is about 1200ml
and residual volume (air that stays in the lungs) is about 1200ml
total equals about 6000ml, or 6 liters
Kinooning it up for 20 years and counting
I’m not following this. If you can exhale 1200ml and there’s 1200ml left, that’s a total of 2400ml. So how can you breath in 3100ml?
okay, here we go.
during normal ventlation your lung volume hovers around 2500-3000ml (2500 when you complete exhaliation, 3000 when you complete inhaliation). Now, the inspratory reserve volume is what you can inhale forceably beyond 3000ml, and that is up to 6000 ml. The expiratory reserve volume is what you can forceably exhale beyone the 2500 that you stop at when normally breathing, down to the residual air that remains in the lungs
so the math says
IRV (3000) + TV (500) + ERV (1200) + RV (1200) = about 6000ml, or 6 liters
The numbers above are approxmates, and may vary depending on a persons size
Kinooning it up for 20 years and counting
A point of clarification. The fluid that was removed was, no doubt, taken from a so-called pleural effusion. This is a collection of fluid that actually resides outside the lung (between the lung and inside of the chest wall). This potential space between the lung and the chest wall is much greater than the volume of the underlying lung. So, it’s not too impressive to have had a quart or more accumulate.
A similar problem occurs in the belly, between the outside of the guts and the inside of the abdominal wall. It’s called ascites. There can easily be 10 to 25 litres of such ascitic fluid. That’s over twenty to fifty pounds for you non-SI unit types!
http://www.unm.edu/~jimmy/lung_volumes.jpg
the above link goes to a graph that demonstrates the volume of the lungs, explains their volumes much better that I seem to have been able to.
As for the fluid being removed from around the lung, that is likely. It is also possible for the fluid to accumulate into the lung itself. It all depends on what is causing the accumulation and where it is going on. TO say it was undoubtably removed from the plural linging and the sac it forms around the lungs is being too general.
Kinooning it up for 20 years and counting
Actually, I can guarantee that the fluid was removed from outside the lung. It was taken from a pleural effusion. I am not being too general.
Fluid within the lung (pulmonary edema) is diffuse and is not contained in a drainable sac or space. It cannot be mechanically drained. It can be mobilzed by medications such as diuretics.
Next, we could talk about pericardial effusions (fluid around the heart), but I’d probably faint just thinking about the last one I drained. The patient did. I thought she was dead.
Would you like to talk about caradic tampanod? It does suck when you have blood filling the caradic sac, preventing the heart from fully expanding to allow for the maximun input of blood into the heart. The narrowing of the BP is a good sign for this. I got my last patient who suffered from this to the hospital in time to save them.
Now then you can actually suction the lungs to remove fluid from them, I’ve seen it done in the ER. It is a drastic measure, and is not commonly done. Again, to flat out say that the fluid was not removed from the lung is a generalization. It was most likely removed from the plural sac around the lung, but that would not be a deffenite.
Kinooning it up for 20 years and counting
Show me a reference attesting to the mechanical drainage of intraparenychmal lung fluid and I’ll drink the next sample that’s taken.
I shall swallow some pride to say that I do not have a refrence directly at hand. I can only say that I would have swore I had seen it done once in a patient I had dropped off, but that could have simply been suctioning of the trachea. Beyond that I was told that it was possible by an instructor. I shall speak with the resources I have at UNM medical center and will have to get back to you on that.
Kinooning it up for 20 years and counting
Correction! The term is “tidal”!
(Was that a Freudian slip?)
“They’re coming to take me away ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee, to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time… :)” - Napoleon IV
::This is a test post. Please ignore it::
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Note to Jinx: You did. I saw it. I made them and the comment go bye-bye. Just call me Mr. Clean.
[Note: This message has been edited by manhattan]
Ahh, good lord, what the heck was I thinking as I was typing. Of course it is tidal volume…good lord
<slinks off now, feeling like an idiot>
Kinooning it up for 20 years and counting
If it is any help to the arguement over if it’s possible to drain fluid by mechanical mean from the lung interior, I found a reference which uses a (external) pump to drain fluid from the lungs usig a tube inserted through the lung wall. But, this reference…although legit…does not mean the method actually is successful!
The tube inserted through the chest wall which drains fluid “from the lungs” is almost certainly draining pleural fluid, i.e. fluid which is outside the lung but inside the chest wall. The apparatus that you describe cetainly sounds like that’s what it’s doing.
One reason why I can’t believe it’s possible to drain fluid from within the lung via an external tube is that, essentially, such a tube would ultimately be in series with your windpipe, i.e. it would suck air down your windpipe into itself (a tube between the outside of your lung and the inside of your chest wall, would not communicate in this way).
Moreover, fluid in the lungs is not localized and therefore does not lend itself to be mechanically drained (an abscess does, but that’s not what we’re talking about).
