Diffusional screening in the human pulmonary acinus

Abstract

In the mammalian lung acini, O2 diffuses into quasi-static air toward the alveolar membrane, where the gas exchange with blood takes place. The O2 flux is then influenced by the O2diffusivity, the membrane permeability, and the acinus geometric complexity. This phenomenon has been recently studied in an abstract geometric model of the acinus, the Hilbert acinus (Sapoval B, Filoche M, and Weibel ER, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 99: 10411, 2002). This is extended here to a more realistic geometry originated from the morphological model of Kitaoka et al. (Kitaoka K, Tamura S, and Takaki R, J Appl Physiol 88: 2260–2268, 2000). Two-dimensional numerical simulations of the steady-state diffusion equation with mixed boundary conditions are used to quantify the process. The alveolar O2 concentration, or partial pressure, and the O2 flux are computed and show that diffusional screening exists at rest. These results confirm that smaller acini are more efficient, as suggested for the Hilbert acini.