Lung volume restriction as a ventilatory stimulus during breath holding

¹ Cardio-Pulmonary Laboratory, Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, Cooperstown, New York

Experiments on breath holding in man are presented which demonstrate that a restriction in the volume of gas in the lungs is an independent ventilatory stimulus which limits breath holding. This reflex stimulus interacts with the chemical stimuli from hypercapnia and hypoxia to determine the breaking point of breath holding. Previous work by others failed to demonstrate a relationship between lung volume restriction and hypoxia at the breaking point of breath holding with air. Experiments are presented which explain this and show that when hypoxia is present at the breaking point of breath holding, a time correction must be introduced to relate lung volume at the breaking point with the Pa_OO2 that existed several seconds before. When this is done the relationship between lung volume restriction and hypoxia becomes apparent.

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