The Pulmonary and Critical Care Department provides services through the following units:
- Adult intensive care
Intensive care specialists are qualified to deal with complex tumor cases in all departments at KHCC, including intensive care.
The intensive care unit (ICU) is equipped with the latest technologies that allow for all operations to be performed in the ICU, such as monitoring blood circulation, mechanical ventilation, surgical interventions using ultrasound devices, lung endoscopy, and others.
- Pulmonary service
This unit provides thoracic services such as bronchoscopies and specialized ultrasound endoscopy for diagnosing and staging cancer. The clinic also offers interventional bronchoscopy techniques such as argon plasma coagulation and cryotherapy.
In addition, through its laboratories, the clinic provides the highest levels of pulmonary function testing and cardiopulmonary stress testing.
- Respiratory therapy service
Respiratory therapists help and supervise patients who need the following services:
- Oxygen therapy
- Delivery of bronchodilators (to relieve narrowing of airways)
- Chest physiotherapy (breathing exercises)
- Breathing machines (ventilators)
- Extubation (once a patient recovers)
- Pulmonary function testing: A comprehensive PFT unit that offers standard pulmonary function testing, cardio-pulmonary exercise testing as well as impulse oscillometry – a lung function test for kids who are unable to perform a standard PFT. It includes the following:
- Spirometry to measure how much and how quickly a person can move air out of their lungs;
- Gas diffusion test to measure the amount of oxygen and other gasses that move to and from the blood; and
- Lung volume test to measure the total volume of air that a person’s lungs can handle.
- Cardio-pulmonary exercise testing: An assessment of the integrative exercise response involving the pulmonary, cardiovascular, hematopoietic, neuropsychological and skeletal system, which is not adequately reflected through the measurement of individual organ system function.
- Education: We train patients and health care providers in the proper use of inhalers, physiotherapy and incentive spirometry. This has proven to be the most successful way to manage and prevent breathing problems for our patients.
- Special training in handling ventilators: We administer metered dose inhalers through closed systems for patients on ventilators, handling high frequency oscillatory ventilators, and the proper use of BiPAB machines.
- Bronchoscopy: A medical procedure where the practitioner examines the inside of a patient's airway with the help of a tube called a “bronchoscope”. Sometimes samples are taken from inside the lungs.