Disambiguation | ||||
|
Untitled
editThis needs to be its own article: transpulmonary pressure does not talk about and should not talk about transmural pressure, because they're different concepts that result in functionally different consequences (we're talking whole different disease states related to problems with one or the other: think COPD vs pulmonary hypertension, not the same in any of cause treatment or outcomes).
The bottom line being they talk about different pressure differences: transpulmonary = difference between alveolar/intrapleural space (aka "outside of the lung), and transmural = difference between alveoli/capillaries (technically more extracellular space than alveoli, but unless you've got some crazy pulmonary edema they're about the same).
Transmural pressure and transpulmonary pressure are entirely independent. West's Respiratory Physiology states that transpulmonary pressure is "the difference in pressure between the inside and the out- side of the lung (alveoli)" or "is numerically equal to the pressure around the lung when the alveolar pressure is atmospheric" whereas transmural pressure (as relates to the lung) is "The pressure difference between the inside and outside of the capillaries".