Pulmonary Surfactant Function in Alveoli and Conducting Airways

The role of pulmonary surfactant in obstructive airways disease.

Pulmonary surfactant research has an increasing impact on treatment considerations in adult respiratory disorders, above all acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Obstructive airways diseases have only been sporadically addressed in this respect. In the last decade, direct and circumstantial evidence for surfactant as a contributing factor in the regulation of airway calibre has emerged. ...

Pulmonary surfactant: phase behavior and function.

Pulmonary surfactant functions by first flowing rapidly into the alveolar air/water interface, but then resisting collapse from the surface when the adsorbed interfacial film is compressed during exhalation. Widely accepted models emphasize the importance of phase behavior in both processes. Recent studies show, however, that fluidity is a relatively minor determinant of adsorption and that sol...

Pulmonary surfactant: its isolation, characterization and function.

Absorption from the Pulmonary Alveoli

Experiments upon dogs anesthetized with nembutal and lasting 4 hours, in which the right lymphatic duct and thoracic duct have been cannulated and collection of lung lymph and blood specimens was accomplished after intratracheal instillation of dog plasma, purified bovine serum albumin, crystallized egg albumin, and hemoglobin, have shown that the absorption of such molecules is slight. Experim...

The biophysical function of pulmonary surfactant.

Pulmonary surfactant lowers surface tension in the lungs. Physiological studies indicate two key aspects of this function: that the surfactant film forms rapidly; and that when compressed by the shrinking alveolar area during exhalation, the film reduces surface tension to very low values. These observations suggest that surfactant vesicles adsorb quickly, and that during compression, the adsor...