Mechanical ventilation appears (to me, a naive observer) to help only push air into the lungs if a person cannot breathe well— that is to say, having difficulty inhaling and exhaling. It makes sense to me that a person who is perhaps paralyzed would need a machine to force the lungs the work, mechanically speaking.
But how does this help someone suffering from injury or disease in the lungs themselves? Is a ventilator better at delivering oxygen than our own normal breathing process?
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A ventilator isn’t needed if the respiratory system is working normally. It’s there to help when you *can’t* breath normally. That doesn’t necessarily have to be something wrong with the diaphragm itself, it could be something else wrong that prevents you from getting oxygen properly. The ventilator doesn’t just take over for the diaphragm, it can also adjust oxygen percentage, humidity, etc.
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