I was thinking, when we breathe we are exchanging one blood born gas for another, with our lungs acting as the transfer station. I remember seeing a fluid on tv several years ago that would allow a person to breathe in it (reference the movie The Abyss).
My question is, what other alternative “could” we have? Would it be possible to have a machine, similar to a dialisys machine, that would remove “bad gasses” and impart “good gasses” into the blood thus removing the need for normal aspiration? Perhaps some sort of time release capsule or implant that maintains a steady level of O2 in the bloodstream and some way to filter out the CO?
What would be the effect of physically not breathing but maintaining a constant blood gas composition? Would our brain be able to accept / adapt to this? In using the fluid mentioned earlier, what are the neurological effects and are they accute or chronic?
There are such machines. The most well know is cardio-pulmonary bypass, or the heart-lung machine used during open heart surgery. Another is ECMO or ExtraCorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, which is used one critically ill infants and children when their heart and/or lung fail, or are not developed enough to sustain life.
There are others as well, but all are used in desperate, life saving situations.
The liquid oxygenation you heard about was only marginally effective. I don’t know if it’s still being studied, but the early studies were not very successful. I cared for two patients in one of the early studies, both had bad outcomes.
The fluid you’re thinking of is LiquiVent, or perfluorocarbon.
In The Abyss, and in tests going back into the 60’s, they dunked a mouse in the stuff. For humans, they don’t immerse the body, but introduce it into the lungs along with air from a ventilator. As **picunurse ** says, it’s reserved for really dire cases, where a happy outcome is already unlikely.
So, for example, it’s possible for an astronaut to “plug in” to a machine that would keep him alive for a long period, providing nutrition, oxygen, waste removal ect… but not (currently) safely or effectively. If this were safe and effective, would the limiting of resources in this way be an asset (weight reduction, centralized control, self containment) or a liability (equipment weight, energy use, management and maintenance cost)?
Hal - “Dave? What are you doing with that pudding pop?”
Incientally, the perfluorocarbons you saw i The Abyss are an old idea - I was reading about experiments with them back in the 1960s. Hal Clement wrote a novel about livin in such fluids, and suggested that, since the human body wasn’t designed for dealing with such viscous stuff, reflexes like coughing and gagging might have to be suppressed by drugs or more drastic means. (The novel is Ocean n Top, and it’s pretty obscure and rarely seen.) Swimming in breathable fluid might be a lot less fun than it looks.
Nanotechnology in the form of respirocytes is working on this kind of thing. I think you could go 4 hours without breathing with those in your bloodstream. Assuming the chemistry and engineering picks up someday perhaps they’d convert CO2 into O2 in your bloodstream, eliminating the need to breathe at all.
Be interesting to see the minds response to it. Things like bypass and ECMO are done under deep sedation. Intubating a patient is the same, they have to have major brain injury or potent drugs on board to tolerate a foreign body in the airway. I know that our resp pattern is driven by changing ph and gas levels, but I wonder how it would “feel” to not breathe if these didn’t change,
Larry
Thanks, that’s a great link. Kinda creepy looking (tiny little death stars) but basically what I’m talking about. Anytime I get to read about Surface Electrical Thrombogenicity, it’s going to be a great day.