Suffocation is an inability to draw air into the lungs. It can be caused by
choking on an object, smothering, strangulation, a crushing injury to the chest, or paralysis of the muscles of breathing. The term is often used synonymously with asphyxia, but actually
Suffocation is
derived from the Latin
word for "choking," whereas
asphyxia is derived from the Greek word meaning "no throbbing" and is more often applied to the effects of depriving tissues of oxygen. The original distinction between the two terms is still preserved in such expressions as intrauterine asphyxia, defined as the death of a fetus from deprivation of
oxygen from maternal blood and not from suffocation.
More abstracts about the SUFFOCATION