Adventist Health Glendale introduces its Interventional Pulmonology program led by board-certified IP pioneer Ramyar Mahdavi, MD. Using minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic technologies, for both malignant and non-malignant lung disease, Interventional Pulmonology allows for the diagnosis and treatment of parts of the lung previously accessible only through surgery. Meet Dr. Mahdavi and learn how Adventist Health Glendale is providing your patients with the most advanced care of lung disease with much shorter recovery times.
My name is Ramya Madevi. I'm board certified interventional pulnologist. I've joined uh Adventist Health Glendale in summer 2024. I think the most important part of interventional pulmonology, especially when I wanna go back to lung cancer part and the diagnostic part is early diagnosis of lung cancer. which completely changed the Uh, scenario for the patient in terms of the treatment and survival. Um We have the state of the art here at uh at dentist Health Glendale because we have all the advanced technology that we need to get to this point to diagnose early stage lung cancer. When I joined uh an academia or university hospital 10 years ago, I never thought that we can do this kind of cases in a community health system, but with the support from uh. Adventist Health Glendale, we can easily do all this kind of procedures in the community. But this case that I want to share with you is non-malignant case. Uh, I had a referral from, uh, another hospital. The patient, uh, is a 47 year old female who diagnosed with many years of asthma, uh, treated with different kind of nebulizer, inhalers, long term steroid, and all those things without. Having a CAT scan of the chest, we transferred the patient here and we did a rigid bronchoscopy because my diagnosis with further uh investigation here with another kind of CAT scan which we do it for dynamic airway collapse. The diagnosis was uh uh EE or excessive dynamic airway collapse. So the treatment for that is the stent trial, meaning that putting a stent in the airway to keep the airway open. Why stent my international pornology colleagues, they know that is one of the. Most complicated procedure to put the wire stent because we have to put the stent that part of one leg going to the right, uh, main bronchus. One leg, left main bronchus, and the major part in the trachea. So successfully we did the procedure with the tools and uh training and expertise that we had the day after the procedure I went to her room. When I saw her, I, I won't forget that look that the patient was looking at me laughing oh doctor you saved my life for the first time after many years I can't breathe. Uh, that was really a moment for me to. Again, love my job, love what I what I'm doing. In malignant cases, again, the diagnostic part will be uh advanced bronchoscopy like uh uh EBAS or endoronchial ultrasound. It will be uh robotic bronchoscopy to. Do the biopsy from different parts of the lung with very precise movement with help of GPS system in the robotic bronchoscope and uh different kind of, uh, modalities like uh rigid bronchoscopy to get to the airway, uh, to put stent in the airway, to keep the airway open in malignant disease and non-malignant diseases, as well as, uh, putting, for example. Another category of the procedures that we do with the plural procedure is tunnel pleural catheter for recurrent pleural effusion, and the patient instead of coming to the hospital or the office to drain the fluid, malignant or non-malignant, uh, we can put the catheter for the patient that he or she can, uh, basically get rid of the fluid himself or herself, uh, but draining the fluid at home. So again, quality of life and improving quality of life for the patient that we deal with is very important. Now we have the program real program for interventional pulmonology has been established at uh Adventist Health Glendale. We are ready to help or give this service to the patients and the referring physicians uh in the area or beyond this area. Uh, to primary care doctors who found lung nodules in their evaluation of their patient incidentally to the family, family physicians who do the same maybe they find something in the CAT scan they found some nodules or something. Uh, to medical oncologists, to radiation oncologists, to our colleagues in thoracic surgery, uh, that, uh, we can, uh, give this service to them and to their patients.
