ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews data obtained primarily from animal experiments regarding the injury, repair, and adaptative processes following the inhalation of some of the more common oxidizing gases other than oxygen itself: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone. In order to understand the processes of repair and adaptation, it is necessary to review briefly the structural organization of the airway epithelium and to define the function of the cellular constituents. The repair sequence following inhalation injury has three stages: a premitotic stage, a mitotic stage, and a redifferentiation stage. Moreover, another major shortcoming of studies on oxidant inhalation injury is the difficulty in obtaining a complete morphologic and physiological evaluation. One very interesting feature of oxidant gas injury that causes selective cell exfoliation is that not all the injured ciliated cells are immediately cleared from the airway mucosa, some remain attached 6 hr after the exposure.
