Lung development and pulmonary malformations

Abstract

In the early weeks of gestation the human lung originates as a ventral endodermal pouch from the primitive foregut; it thereafter continues to grow through to adulthood until it reaches an exchange surface area of around 70–100 m2; the air-blood barrier is some 0.2 microns thick, 1/50 of the thickness of a sheet of tissue paper.