• Question: How does the iron lung work because I saw a documentary on it and I didn't really understand it

    Asked by anon-174278 to Carl on 14 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Carl Barford

      Carl Barford answered on 14 Jun 2018:

      I have an idea it works by sucking your chest from the outside, to make it move and take in air. Why not look it up

Comments

  • Photo: Alex

    Alex commented on :

    We breathe through something called “negative pressure breathing”. This means that when we breathe in, our ribs push out, our diaphragm contracts, and that makes our chest cavity larger. This means that there is less pressure in the chest cavity, so our lungs expand, taking in air. When the diaphragm relaxes, the opposite happens, and we breathe out again.

    When someone uses an iron lung, they have lost the ability to do this on their own, and need a machine to do it for them. When someone lies in the iron lung, it creates an airtight compartment. The machine has pumps which control the air pressure – when the pressure falls, the lungs expand, as they do when we breathe naturally.