Emergency & Acute Care Medicine

Respiratory Emergency

The lung does much more than just "basic" gas exchange. To prevent large, solid objects from reaching your brain, heart, or other vital organs, one of their functions is to remove them from circulation. A significant illness or damage causes the lungs to become extremely inflamed, which results in the respiratory emergency. Inflammation leads to the collapse of air sacs and the leakage of fluid into the lungs from adjacent blood vessels. The lungs will eventually fill with so much fluid that breathing will become impossible and result in death. Breathing and the patient's airway are crucial to his survival. According to a significant prospective European experiment, 16.1 percent of all patients receiving mechanical ventilation and 7.1 percent of patients hospitalized to an ICU both experience acute lung damage.