Pulmonary Medicine
Breathing feeds oxygen to every cell in the body. Without sufficient oxygen, people are more prone to health problems, including respiratory illnesses, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and even heart disease. But ordinary, everyday breathing isn’t enough to keep the oxygen flowing through the body at peak levels, experts at Rush University Medical Center say.
What is Pulmonary Medicine?
Pulmonary medicine: The branch of medicine that deals with the causes, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of diseases affecting the lungs. Pulmonary medicine deals with many diseases and conditions, including: ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome), asthma, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), cystic fibrosis, interstitial lung disease, lung cancer, lung transplants, occupational lung disease, pulmonary hypertension, pulmonary tuberculosis, sarcoidosis of the lungs, and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).
Pulmonary medicine is also sometimes called pulmonology which is the science concerned with the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the lungs. .A pulmonologist, or pulmonary disease specialist, is a physician who possesses specialized knowledge and skill in the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary (lung) conditions and diseases.
Pulmonology is classified as an internal medicine subspecialty. Because of the variety of clinical problems encountered, knowledge of internal medicine and other specialties is required in order to obtain certification.
Services
Clinical Evaluation
Pulmonary Function Tests
Exercise Stress Test
Bronchoscopy
Multiple-Breath Washout Test
Inhalation Challenge Test
Disorders
Asthma
Asthma is a chronic (long-term) disease that makes it hard to breathe. Asthma can’t be cured, but it can be managed. With proper treatment, people with asthma can lead normal, active lives. If you have asthma, your airways (breathing passages) are extra sensitive. When you are around certain things, your extra-sensitive airways can:
- Become red and swollen – your airways get inflamed inside. They fill up with mucus. The swelling and mucus make your airways narrower, so it’s harder for the air to pass through.
- Become “twitchy” and go into spasm – the muscles around your airways squeeze together and tighten. This makes your airways narrower, leaving less room for the air to pass through.
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is a breathing (respiratory) condition in which there is an infection of the lung.
Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is found in persons who have not recently been in the hospital or another health care facility such as a nursing home or rehab facility. Pneumonia that affects persons in health care facilities, such as hospitals, is called hospital-acquired pneumonia.
Pneumonia is a common illness that affects millions of people each year in the United States. Germs called bacteria, viruses, and fungi may cause pneumonia. In adults, bacteria are the most common cause of pneumonia.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
COPD is a long-term lung disease often caused by smoking.
COPD includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Many people with COPD have both bronchitis and emphysema. COPD slowly damages your airways, the breathing tubes that carry air in and out of your lungs. COPD makes airways swollen and partly blocked by mucus. It also damages in the tiny air sacs at the tips of your airways. This makes it hard to move air in and out of your lungs.
Pulmonary Hypertension
Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is high blood pressure in the arteries to your lungs. It is a serious condition. If you have it, the blood vessels that carry blood from your heart to your lungs become hard and narrow. Your heart has to work harder to pump the blood through. Over time, your heart weakens and cannot do its job and you can develop heart failure.
As PH worsens, you may find it hard to do any physical activities.
There are two main kinds of PH. One runs in families or appears for no known reason. The other kind is related to another condition, usually heart or lung disease. There is no cure for PH. Treatments can control symptoms. They involve treating the heart or lung disease, medicines, oxygen, and sometimes lung transplantation
Pulmonary Fibrosis
Pulmonary fibrosis is a condition in which the tissue deep in your lungs becomes scarred over time. This tissue gets thick and stiff. That makes it hard for you to catch your breath, and your blood may not get enough oxygen. Causes of pulmonary fibrosis include environmental pollutants, some medicines, some connective tissue diseases, and interstitial lung disease. Interstitial lung disease is the name for a large group of diseases that inflame or scar the lungs. In most cases, the cause cannot be found. This is called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Bronchitis
Bronchitis is a respiratory disease in which the mucus membrane in the lungs’ bronchial passages becomes inflamed. As the irritated membrane swells and grows thicker, it narrows or shuts off the tiny airways in the lungs, resulting in coughing spells that may be accompanied by phlegm and breathlessness.
The disease comes in two forms: acute (lasting from one to three weeks) and chronic (lasting at least 3 months of the year for two years in a row). People with asthma may also have asthmatic bronchitis, inflammation of the lining of the bronchial tubes.
Lung Cancer
Lung cancer and smoking often, but not always, go hand in hand. As lung cancer stages advance, lung cancer symptoms include coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, and bloody mucus. Treatment includes surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation.
Symptoms of lung cancer include cough, coughing up blood or rusty-colored phlegm, fatigue, unexplained weight loss, recurrent respiratory infections, hoarseness, new wheezing, and shortness of breath.