Getting Started: The Approach to Respiratory Physiology

Putting It Together

As you proceed through the chapters, you will learn a number of concepts and facts about different elements of the respiratory system. To allow you to see how the things you have learned can be used to analyze a patient problem, each chapter ends with a section called "Putting It Together." These sections present clinical scenarios and pose diagnostic or management questions. We then show you how your growing knowledge of physiology can be applied to the case to understand the particular patient's problem. As previously noted, this is not a pathophysiology book, and we do not expect you to have knowledge of the disease processes themselves. We do believe, however, that it is helpful to see how physiological principles are used on a daily basis in patient care. Try your best to apply what you've learned before viewing the discussion. Even though you have just scratched the surface of respiratory physiology in this introductory chapter, let's try a case together to show you how this works: