Hyderabad, 1st September 2021: With increasing pollution, infectious diseases, and stress levels, the burden of pulmonary diseases is consistently on the rise. There is an ever increasing need for better and focused care to improve patient outcomes. Newer and more precise diagnostic tests are available for accurate diagnosis and newer medicines are being launched every year. However, many of these are not available to the common man because of lack of awareness and lack of access to these. Under the supervision of Dr. V. Nagarjuna Maturu, Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Yashoda Hospital Somajiguda is starting these specialty clinics in Pulmonology where people with severe lung diseases get focused attention and access to the best treatments available.
Each specialty clinic focuses on a particular disease.
- A) Severe Asthma Clinic: Asthma is one of the commonest problems in our country. It is estimated that 1.31 billion people suffer from asthma in India. Of these, five percent of them (i.e. 65 million Indians) suffer from severe asthma. People with severe asthma have symptoms which do not respond to conventional asthma medicines. This group of people lead a poor quality of life, suffer from frequent attacks and have poor lung function.
Severe asthma clinics target this subset of people and help in improving disease control. Each patient will be comprehensively assessed to identify the reasons for poor control of asthma and these shall be corrected. Patients will have access to the best therapies for asthma control, which include biologics and bronchial thermoplasty. Biologics are a class of drugs that target and block the molecules which lead to worsening of asthma. Each asthma patient has a dedicated mechanism for disease. This precise pathway is identified by performing tests such as lung function tests, FeNo, certain blood tests and sputum analysis (called as phenotyping the disease) and then, the correct biologic is chosen for the patient. This is called “Precision therapy for asthma”. Some of the biologics which are available include Omalizumab, Mepolizumab and Benralizumab. When chosen correctly, these biologics improve symptoms, quality of life and lung function in these patients with severe asthma.
Severe Asthma Clinics will be open every Thursday between 11 am and 5 pm.
Bronchial thermoplasty is another novel procedure for patients with severe asthma who are between 18 and 65 years of age. In this therapy, airways are warmed using a special probe passed through a bronchoscope. Because of this, the muscle around the airways reduces, they open up, and the asthma becomes better controlled.
- B) ILD (Interstitial lung disease) clinic: Interstitial lung diseases are a group of lung diseases characterized by thickening of the alveolar walls (air sacs which deliver oxygen to the blood). This leads to people developing dry cough and breathlessness. If not diagnosed early and treated correctly, the changes become permanent and cure remains difficult. The cause for ILD and the type of ILD need to be identified for the best results. The therapy is then tailored as per the type of ILD and the cause of ILD.
ILD Clinic will be open every Friday from 11 am to 5 pm.
At the ILD clinic, a detailed assessment of the patient is performed to characterize the type of ILD. The patients shall have access to the entire gamut of investigations (serologic tests, High resolution scans, Advanced lung function tests) which will help in identifying the type of ILD and the severity of ILS. A subset of patients shall require a biopsy to be performed to precisely identify the pattern of ILD. Minimally invasive techniques for obtaining lung biopsy include “Cryo biopsy”, which are made available to the patient. People with severe ILD, where medical therapy has failed, and who are likely to benefit from lung transplant shall be assessed by a team specialized in lung transplantation.
Speaking on the occasion of the launch, Dr. G. Surender Rao, Managing Director Yashoda Hospitals Hyderabad said, “Yashoda Hospitals also prides itself in conducting the highest number of bronchial thermoplasty procedures in the country. Several people have benefited from this procedure over the last 3 years. Our Group has been the first to start cryotherapy and has performed the highest number of Cryobiopsies in the Twin Telugu states.”
