rather intersesting....

[^*^BATMAN^*^]

this was the answer in regards to the possibility of breathing a liquid, like in the abyss......

Very interesting question. Let's split the answer it in three parts:

First, before birth, when a fetus is in his mom's womb, he does not
breathe. His lungs are not in function, and the alveoli (the billions of
little spheras that receive air and exchange oxygen and carbon dioxid with
the blood) are collapsed. At birth, various stimuli generate a sort of
reflex wich makes respiration start. A good cry means that the newborn has
initiated breathing the right way. Before delivery, the fetus gets its
oxygen and glucose through umbilical blood flow. At birth, the circulatory
pattern changes, and blood remains oxygenated through aerial respiration.

The second question is the tolerance of liquid respiration. I mean, is it
possible to breathe water instead of air ?. Think to what happens when you
let a drop of coffee or water go into your larynx and trachea instead of
your oesophagus. You cough, and cough, until you have expelled the liquid.
The inside of the trachea is very rich with nervous terminations wich, when
irritated by a solid or liquid particle, generate a very strong cough
reflex. It is a "survival reflex". In very particular settings, with strong
behavorial training, you become able to breathe in a liquid environment
(remember the rat in Abbys).

The last and most important question is, regardless of local tolerance of
breathing in a liquid, the effectiveness of such a breathing. To reamin
alive, you need an oxygen input through your lungs, i.e. you must get
enough oxygen from your environment to your blood. Air contains 21% of
oxygen, and the lungs are able to extract enough to fuel your brain, heart,
muscles and so on through your blood flow. But, considering water, the
amount of oxygen in water is far below the amount in air. Therefore,
provided that you are trained to breathe in liquid, you will anyway die of
anoxia, i.e. your lungs will not extract enough oxygen from water to keep
your organism active (prevention of drowning lies in learning swimming, not
training in order to tolerate water inhalation...)

In order to survive in a liquid environment, you need to be immerged in a
very special liquid, whose oxygen concentration is rather high. Blood is
this typical liquid...... In Abbys, the liquid was perfluorocarbon, a
compound used as a blood substitute (artificial blood), wich allows a very
high oxygen concentration when compared to water.

Experiments are ongoing in such a field. At present, rats are able to
survive for a few minutes when immerged in a perfluorocarbon solution. I am
not aware of such results in humans (maybe the Navy has secret
experiments...)

Hope this helps

Luc

Luc A Ronchi, MD
Ped Anesth
Hopital de St Nazaire

 

[rmediver2002]

It is currently being used with premature babies as well although the lungs are only paritially flooded with perfluorocarbon.

http://classes.kumc.edu/cahe/respcared/liquidventilation/wikeper.html

Two difficulties with the Abyss system are, removal of CO2 and the ability to circulate the fluid. The diaphram is not adequate for the latter.

 

[RICHinNC]

do a search on liquid breathing and you find tons of stuff. It is interesting that few of the animals survived long afterwards. I guess once you surface from inside good old mom....you aint suppose to go back in!!!

 

[Jason B]

I remember an article in "Underwater USA" back in the 80's not long after the movie came out. At that time they had tried it on animals and on a human (only on one lung).
jason

 

[String]

The US Navy did trials ages ago on it, i think one person died and the other was reduced to one lung working due to infection.

 

[yeehawherb]

I canb't recall where i found the information, i'll look for it again and post links, but i've read that it's a very real technology and safely in use. the problems originally were that the surfactant on aveoli (sp?) wouldn't completely diffuse oxygen with the perfluorocarbon mixture, so the compound was altered a bit. It was successfully tested on rats and dogs for several hours a new problem arose. Respirating fluid is hard work and the animals were dying of exhaustion. Another article i read alleges that the Navy or DoD were successfully using it as an alternative to SCUBA. This was achieved by intebating the diver with a tube that would circulate the oxygen rich PFC for the diver, eliminating the need to respirate at all, supposedly the diver felt as though he was holding his breath for extended periods. It's also alleged (an unconfirmed i'll add) that this methid was used to send a diver to 3000 ft and back successfully. I['m not sure how true this is, but when i researched it there were several corroberating reports, all said that it was unconfiurmed (i.e. still classified). Regardless, it's an interesting concept.