Respiratory System: Introduction

00:01 In this lecture, you are going to learn how the air we breathe into our lungs is first warmed, moistened, then cleaned before it finally makes its way down to the lung, a huge interface between blood and air and we will look at the structures whereby gaseous products can be exchanged with the blood. We will also look at some of the structures that help us to speak and also smell. Well, I hope you take away a lot of knowledge from this lecture.

00:38 It is important you understand what respiratory epithelium is and what the functions of the conchae in the nasal cavity are. And also we will have to look at the very specialized epithelium, which helps us to smell. The vocal cords in the larynx and the epiglottis are very important structures. And then it is important you understand the structures of all the airways that take the air from our nasal cavity all the way down to the lungs for exchange and when we look at those airways it is important you know the difference between a bronchus, a bronchiole and then the small bronchioles within the lungs that enables the transport of gaseous products from the air into the blood stream. Then it is important that you understand the components of the alveolar wall, that interface where this transfer occurs.

01:36 And there are number of cells that make up that interface. And then lastly it is important for you to understand the blood supply to the lung. Well, as I indicated in the start of this lecture, the lung has a number of different structures that perform very important functions.

01:55 It is important to clean, warm and moisten the air before it passes down into our lungs.

02:00 It is important to understand gas exchange interfaces. Also we are going to appreciate that there are a number of different cells in the respiratory system, that there are receptors, for instance, those that helps us to smell, but also briefly account for how we can speak by looking at structures in the lung. And it is important that we look at that and for you to understand how we can produce speech. So it is also important to understand that the interface in the lung is a very important surface area. It is a huge surface area and although I am not going to this in detail, it provides an enormous surface area for both the lining of the lung wall and also the lining of the capillary beds to secrete various messengers in the body and also break down various messengers in the body. And lastly, we must appreciate that the lung, all the tubes, the nasal cavity and all the conduits going down into the lung are actually exterior to the body and therefore they can be exposed to the possible infiltration by pathogens, antigens, bacteria and so we must have the capacity in all those passages to be able to mount an immune response against those antigens that we inhale.