• Question: Hey can you live without 2 lungs?

    Asked by to Rebecca on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Rebecca Gladstone

      Rebecca Gladstone answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Yes you can live with just one lung!
      The bacteria I work on can cause an infection called pneumonia which is an infection of the lung, if it is not treated soon enough or is hard to treat (for example if the bacteria is resitant to antibiotics) then the lung can be very badly damaged. It swells and fills with fluid and the lung can be scarred, sometimes that part of the lung would need to be removed.

      It is better to have two though so that you can breath in a large volume of air. When you have one lung removed sometimes the lung left can grow to take up some of the space left by the removed lung!

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