The Respiratory System

The problem given in the situation is as follows: If a wound overwhelms the clotting mechanism and leads to serious hemorrhage and drop in blood pressure, what compensations does the body have to defend cardiac output and maintain homeostasis? The body is able to produce cardiac output by relying on the cardiovascular, respiratory, endocrine, renal, and nervous systems to name a few. This specific solution will focus on the respiratory system.

The respiratory system provides oxygen to the blood and organs. The way that the respiratory system achieves this is by deoxygenated blood flowing from the right atrium to the right ventricle and then through the pulmonary semilunar valve to flow into the lungs. Oxygen that has been inhaled travels down

the trachea to the primary, secondary, and tertiary bronchi. From there, the oxygen travels down to the alveoli, which is a thin layer of tissue that is beside a capillary. Through diffusion, the oxygen is able to travel across the membrane to bind with hemoglobin in a red blood cell. The blood flows back to the heart, emptying into the left atrium before flowing to the left ventricle then going out to the rest of the body through the aorta. The average respiratory rate for adults is twelve breaths per minute (Derrickson and Totora 2012). However, when the body suffers from a shock and homeostasis is severely disturbed, the respiratory rate changes.
During a hemorrhage, the blood in the body ends up flowing outside of the arteries/vessels. Serious hemorrhaging can result in tachycardia, tachypnea, and decreased systolic blood pressure, depending on the class (Klabunde 2004). Because of the blood loss, cardiac output and the oxygen supply to organs decreases. The body will try to maintain homeostasis by reversing what is happening inside the body. The respiratory system specifically, will attempt to increase the respiratory rate in order to raise cardiac output and oxygen levels.
During inhalation, the respiratory pump will help return venous blood back to the heart. If the rate of inhalation increases, the amount of blood returning to the heart also increases, which then increases the heart rate, allowing blood to flow through the heart at a faster rate. Pumping blood at a faster rate will provide blood and oxygen supply to the vital organs that are suffering from blood loss due to the hemorrhage sooner. This is one way that the body maintains cardiac output and attempts to increase blood volume, therefore returning the systolic blood pressure back to its normal range (Derrickson and Totora 2012). If the hemorrhaging can be stopped, then the body will slow down respiratory stimulation which will influence the heart rate to decrease, and the body will return to homeostasis and its normal functions once the organs have been supplied with enough blood and oxygen.