Distribution of ventilation and perfusion: a teaching model.

Models can be used as teaching tools to study complex phenomena. This model uses simplifications of blood gas subroutines to provide fast execution of the effect of the distribution of ventilation and blood flow in the lung on arterial blood gases. Assumptions are made that introduce only small errors but that avoid the use of iterations which would slow down execution. The use of Turbo-Pascal as the programming language allows for not only speed in development and execution but also portability to a variety of computers including CP/M systems and IBM-PCs.