Air-conditioning in the human nasal cavity

Abstract

Healthy humans normally breathe through their nose even though its complex geometry imposes a significantly higher resistance in comparison with mouth breathing. The major functional roles of nasal breathing are defense against infiltrating particles and conditioning of the inspired air to nearly alveolar conditions in order to maintain the internal milieu of the lung. The state-of-the-art of the existing knowledge on nasal air-conditioning will be discussed in this review, including in vivo measurements in humans and computational studies on nasal air-conditioning capacity. Areas where further studies will improve our understanding and may help medical diagnosis and intervention in pathological states will be introduced.