EDITORIAL

Collateral ventilation

Collateral ventilation

E J Cetti, A J Moore, D M Geddes

Department of Respiratory Medicine, Royal Brompton Hospital, London, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr E J Cetti
Department of Respiratory Medicine, Royal Brompton Hospital, Sydney Street, London SW3 6NP, UK; e.cetti@rbht.nhs.uk

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Understanding collateral ventilation is probably central to planning new bronchoscopic techniques for treating emphysema

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Keywords: emphysema; interlobar collateral ventilation; radiological heterogeneity; lung transplantation

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The phenomenon of collateral ventilation in the human lung is defined as "the ventilation of alveolar structures through passages or channels that bypass the normal airways". This phenomenon seems to be prominent in emphysema and is emerging as a key issue for those working in the new and exciting field of bronchoscopic techniques for treating emphysema.

The existence of channels within the lungs through which such collateral flow could occur was realised a century ago,¹ but it was not until the 1930s that the possible significance of this flow was recognised.² This significance was largely ignored by physiologists and physicians alike,³ apart from a select band of investigators in the 1960s and 1970s.^4–7 However, with the emergence of new bronchoscopic techniques for treating emphysema, the phenomenon of collateral ventilation has gained a renewed importance and the paper by Higuchi et al⁸ in this issue of Thorax casts some . . . [Full text of this article]

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