Clinical Expertise

The medical intensive care unit provides comprehensive critical care services for patients who suffer from a wide range of life-threatening illnesses such as pneumonia, acute lung injury, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), liver failure, gastrointestinal bleeding, acute kidney failure and shock.

Our medical ICU teams are supervised by physicians who specialize in critical care medicine and pulmonary disease. Our teams are complemented by strong support from nurse practitioners, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, nutritionists, physical and occupational therapists, and social workers.

Our areas of special focus include diagnosis and management of ARDS and sepsis. We have conducted research on these conditions and collaborated on many multicenter clinical trials of promising new treatments for ARDS and pneumonia. Our advanced therapeutic approaches include conventional lung-protective mechanical ventilation, inhaled prostacyclin, inhaled nitric oxide (iNO), extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Learn more about critical care research at the UCI School of Medicine. 

PULMONARY DISEASES Research

The UCI Comprehensive Sleep Center is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary sleep center facility, and the only academic sleep program in Orange County. The center offers a full range of clinical services including on-site and at-home testing, behavioral sleep medicine, and upper airway stimulation implants for sleep apnea. The center is under the medical direction of board-certified sleep physician Rami Khayat, MD. Center providers have backgrounds in pulmonary medicine, psychiatry, sleep surgery and psychology.

Our division also has an active and successful sleep medicine research program. Learn more about sleep research at the UCI School of Medicine.

PULMONARY DISEASES RESEARCH

The School of Medicine’s pulmonary hypertension program has grown tremendously in the last three years into a state-of-the-art facility to care for patients with this complicated condition. Our facilities support right heart catheterization and advanced hemodynamic assessment, allowing a tailored therapy for each patient. Our team manages patients’ treatment with careful monitoring regarding symptomology and medication side effects, and close communication among care providers including physicians and nurse practitioners.

Pulmonary hypertension is a devastating condition, and there is much to be learned. Our division is involved in many areas of research regarding management of the disease. Learn more about clinical research for pulmonary hypertension.

PULMONARY DISEASES RESEARCH

Interstitial lung disease (ILD) includes a range of conditions that cause lung fibrosis, from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis to autoimmune disorders and environmental exposures. Because of the broad array of conditions that fall under this umbrella, the treatment of ILD patients is a multidisciplinary endeavor requiring the input of pulmonologists, radiologists, rheumatologists, cardiologists, thoracic surgeons and sometimes transplant physicians.

Caring for patients with ILD is both challenging and rewarding. We are honored to get to know the patients we care for over the years, learn about their lives, think critically with them about their goals for care and help guide them and their loved ones through treatment decisions.

In addition to patient care, the ILD program is involved in a number of Phase II and III clinical trials. Learn more about ILD research at the UCI School of Medicine.

PULMONARY DISEASES RESEARCH

The interventional pulmonary (IP) program provides comprehensive services to a diverse population of patients with benign and malignant lung diseases. Our experts perform all forms of IP procedures in our advanced hybrid operating suite including flexible and rigid bronchoscopy, robotic bronchoscopy, pleuroscopy and tracheostomy. In particular, our program is designed to provide expeditious care for diagnosis and staging of lung cancer. We perform advanced peripheral airway bronchoscopy including robotic bronchoscopy combined with real-time 3D imaging, thin and ultrathin bronchoscopes, and radial array endobronchial ultrasound for diagnosis of lung cancer at early stages when its size is small and hard to reach with conventional bronchoscopy. We are the first program on the West Coast to roll out the Galaxy robotic bronchoscopy platform with TiLT+ Technology to further improve overall diagnostic yield for small lung nodules.

Our advanced procedures include minimally invasive mediastinal staging using linear array endobronchial ultrasound for proper staging of patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Others include rigid bronchoscopy and a spectrum of ablative and therapeutic tools including cold and hot thermal energy, balloon dilation and airway stenting, which are used when the airways are narrowed due to various pathologies. These have helped re-expand the collapsed lung in many patients with lung tumors or patients with respiratory distress from narrowed airways. 

We also offer several diagnostic and therapeutic options for patients with diseases of the pleura, the lining of the lung, including thoracentesis, indwelling pleural catheter insertion, pleuroscopy with pleural biopsy, pleurodesis and percutaneous pleural biopsy. Our team also has expertise in bronchoscopic lung volume reduction therapy (BLVR) for selected patients with severe emphysema.

In addition to delivering high-quality care, we offer cutting-edge clinical trials to patients and serve as a teaching center for medical students, residents and fellows, as well as pulmonologists from other institutions.

PULMONARY DISEASES RESEARCH