The Respiratory System

1. How could an infection in Cari's nasal passages and pharynx spread into the sinuses?

2. What sinuses lie over Cari's eyes? (Hint: see paranasal sinuses on page 837)?

3. Which cells found within Cari's mucous membranes are producing excess amounts of mucus? 

4. What is the cough reflex?

5. How might Cari's hoarse voice be related to the upper respiratory tract infection? Which structures found in the terminal bronchioles and alveoli normally would protect Cari's lungs from infectious pathogens and particulate matter?

6. Where is the base of Cari's lung that the nurse is listening to? 

7. What accessory muscles of respiration must Cari use to forcefully inspire air?

8. How would Cari's the resistance of Cari's airways be affected by the excess mucus and fluid in her lung?

9. How would Cari's lung compliance (the effort required to expand the lungs) be altered as her alveoli fill with fluid due to pneumonia?

10. Cari's respiratory rate is elevated; how does this alter her minute ventilation?

11. Cari has been given pure oxygen to breath; why would increasing the oxygen concentration in the air she is breathing help Cari?

12. Normal blood oxygen saturation levels are greater than 94%; Cari's blood oxygen saturation level was 90% at the time of her exam and an initial arterial blood gas analysis done when she was admitted to the hospital revealed her arterial PO₂ was 54 mm Hg.  How would these clinical findings relate to internal respiration in Cari's body?

13. Which of the symptoms that Cari has described are due to lack of oxygen and reduced oxygen exchange at her tissues?

14. Why would Cari's increased respiratory rate cause her to lose more CO₂ than gain oxygen?  

15. Cari has been put on an artificial ventilation machine and she is still receiving oxygen; how would increasing her PO₂ assist hemoglobin in oxygen transport?

16. As Cari's PCO₂ rose, how was the oxygen-carrying capacity of hemoglobin affected?

17. Cari's fever is subsiding; how might her elevated body temperature have altered oxygen transport in her body?

18. How would you have expected Cari's decreased PCO₂ and alkaline blood pH to have affected her breathing?

19. Why would a decrease in bicarbonate have caused Cari's blood pH to rise?

20. How would administration of oxygen enhance Cari's central drive to breath? Severe oxygen deficiency depresses the activity of central chemoreceptors in the inspiratory area.

21. What is another name for Cari's low blood PCO₂?

22. Which anatomic structures in Cari's respiratory system were initially involved?

23. Why was Cari plagued with a chronic smoker's cough?

24. Which damaging effects of tobacco smoke led to Cari's impaired respiratory defense mechanisms?

25. How did pneumonia affect Cari's lung function?