Fantastic Voyage

Name:

HS130, Section #

Unit #4 Assignment

KaplanUniversity

Date of Submission:

Fantastic Voyage

The journey from the femoral vein to the lower lobe of the fight lung is quite fantastic, especially because of the structures you pass through. The right femoral vein joins the vena cava as the external iliac vein. The vena cava leads the path to the right auricle of the heart, and then proceeds to the right ventricle, where blood is pumped to the lung through the pulmonary artery. In the lungs, there is the exchange of gases, and the main action of combating the bacterium takes place here. From here, the path follows to bronchioles, bronchi, trachea, then to the nose and finally out into air. This is the general outlook of the path I had to through to witness the activities of the body combats invading bacterium.

The right femoral vein transports deoxygenated blood from lower part of the body. Since there is no organ pumping the blood from the rest of the body to the heart, the blood is at low pressure here. Then to the iliac vein, which takes blood to the vena cava. The vena cava is a bigger vein, which is joined by several veins from the body that transport blood back to the heart. This vein has valves, which prevent blood from flowing backwards too, since the blood has low pressure. Its muscles are not very thick, since blood flows slowly and does not require hard pumping. From the vena cava, we entered the heart through the right auricle. The right auricle is a hollow like structure, with muscles around it, which pumps blood through the tricuspid valve that allows blood to go through but never back wards. This took the path to the right ventricle (Gerard, Mark, & Nielsen, 2009).

According to brown (2009), the right ventricle is triangular, and allows blood to enter. It is lined with a thicker muscle than the right auricle. This is to help in pumping the blood to the pulmonary artery. When the blood is pumped from here, it goes through the semi-lunar valves, whose work is to close after blood is pumped, preventing backward flow of blood from the pulmonary artery. The pulmonary artery has thicker muscles than the vena cava, which is necessary for withholding the bigger pressure of blood. It then divides into two, one going to the right lung, which I took. Then the pulmonary has very tiny vessels with a very thin membrane, called the capillaries. This path took me to the lower lobe of the right lung, where the bacteria had invaded, to witness the action of eliminating it.

The structure of the lobe is very complex and interesting. Here, I find tiny air sacs called alveoli, which have very thin walls and very tiny blood vessels by the name capillaries. Through these structures, exchange of gases takes place, where the alveoli pass oxygen and take up carbon from the blood. I found that this air sacs were elastic, allowing in air. This air came from other airways, which are the bronchioles that are connected to bronchi, which are larger, dividing into the bronchioles. The bronchi are connected to the trachea, which leads to nose. This connections look like a tree branch.

In the body, many bacteria find their way in. The body uses its immune system to fight the bacteria. The immune system is a combination of cells, tissue, and organs that defend the body from invading bacterium. White blood cells are the ones responsible for fighting bacterium through chewing them up. These cells are circulated through the whole body to engulf the invading bacterium. The specific and non-specific are the two ways in which the body combats invading bacterium. The specific, deals with fighting the bacterium by chewing it when it enters the body. After the bacterium is killed, the cells involved could remain active in case of another attack. This is adaptive, which is the specific way of combating the bacterium. The non-specific way involves attacking the bacterium that invades irrespective of which one it is. According to Meyer (2009), this is also called the innate system, while the specific is called adaptive.

The non-specific way, which is the first basic immunity, contains prevention barriers, secretory organisms and cells. The prevention barriers include the skin and epithelial organs. The skin is the first basic prevention since it has resistance to bacteria penetration. The tears in the eyes protect the ayes while the mucus protects the respiratory system (Meyer, 2009). Despite these preventions, some bacteria manage to enter the body. In the body, the phagocyte cells engulf this bacterium. These are the cells that I witnessed combating the bacterium that had invaded. The cells involved are neutrophils, which fight bacterium. Other phagocyte cells combat other invading organisms.

In the specific way of fighting bacterium and other infections, the cells involved are lymphocytes, which are further divided into “B” and “T”. The B-lymphocytes are responsible for identifying the invaders. When these invaders are identified, the B-lymphocytes are stimulated to produce antibodies that are specialized to act on particular invaders. These antibodies continue to exist in the body, and when the particular invader is detected again, the antibodies will be ready for them; hence, there is specific protection from that particular antigen. The B-lymphocytes are able to engulf the invading bacterium, but need the T-lymphocytes, which are responsible for killing the antigens. These T-lymphocytes can also trigger other cells like the phagocytes to act on the invaders.

After my path to the lower lobe of the lung where I witnessed the cells above perform their duty on the invading bacterium, I had to get out to the open air, which was another short interesting path. From the lower lobe of the right lung, through the thin walled capillaries, I passed to the air sacs. The air sacs contracted, pushing us to the bronchioles, which were thin vessels, that led to bronchi, which was bigger, and several bronchioles joined it. We went through the bronchi to find a bigger path, which was the trachea. From the trachea, I went through the larynx, and to the pharynx, which connected to the noise, and from here, we entered free air. The activities along these paths were a great phenomenon of how the body of a human being works.

The paths taken are well interconnected with each other and there are many paths on the way, and one has to be sure to take the right one, just like on roads, where one has to be sure which road leads where. The main activity in the lung is exchanging of gas into the body. The fighting of invading bacterium involves a well-coordinated mechanism, which offers protection to the body from disease causing antigens. This protection is referred to as immunity.

References

Brown, O. (2009). The Complete Herbalist.London, UK: Books LLC.

Gerard, J., Mark, T. & Nielsen, T. (2009) Principles of human anatomy. London, UK: J. Wiley.

Mayer, G. (2009). Immunology: In Microbiology and Immunology (chapter one). Retrieved from http://pathmicro.med.sc.edu/ghaffar/innate.htm