what is alveoli and its role in respiration?

The Respiratory System in Health and Disease

All the body systems work together for our survival. The respiration system indeed plays important roles like homeostasis, defensive mechanism, vocalization and respiratory gas exchange. This lecture reminded me of how all the roles come together every second of our lives and how in a defective state can be life threatening. The study of the functions of the respiratory system in its health state aids in an early prognosis of the specific part affected in a disease state.

I have come to appreciate the brain’s role in the control of respiration with the use of chemoreceptors to detect hypoxia, respiratory acidosis and hypercapnia. When the arterial blood gases are not maintained at normal values under normal physiological condition, it is termed as respiratory failure. The lecture helped me to understand that respiratory failure can be due to either low arterial oxygen which is termed as hypoxia or high arterial carbon dioxide which is termed as hypercapnia. The main respiratory diseases can be group under obstructive, restrictive, infectious, lung cancer and vascular lung disease. Lung function test together with patient history, physiological findings and laboratory tests can be used to distinguish between these respiratory diseases. As biomedical scientists, we play an important role to help with the diagnosis of a specific respiratory disease by the laboratory results we help generate.

Question: what is alveoli and its role in respiration?