Department of Pulmonology - St. Vincentius Hospital Karlsruhe

About the Department of Pulmonology at St. Vincentius Hospital Karlsruhe

The Department of Pulmonology at the St. Vincentius Hospital Karlsruhe offers the full range of medical services to patients with respiratory diseases. The department includes a Section for Pulmonary Function Tests, a Section for Endoscopy, a Sleep Laboratory, and a specialized outpatient clinic. The department's therapeutic options include drug therapy and minimally traumatic endoscopic procedures. The department's pulmonologists cooperate closely with thoracic surgeons, allowing them to jointly assess complex clinical cases and elaborate optimal treatment regimens. When diagnosing patients, the department's doctors also often work hand in hand with cardiologists. The medical facility provides care for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bronchial asthma, lung emphysema, tuberculosis, respiratory insufficiency, pleuritis, pneumonia, and other conditions. The department also has all the resources to help patients with coronavirus infection and its consequences. In their work, the department's medical team strictly adheres to current clinical protocols, which contributes to the high efficiency of treatment. The Head Physician of the department is Prof. Dr. med. Konstantin Mayer.

The department is proud of its advanced Section for Pulmonary Function Testing, where all modern options are available for assessing lung ventilation parameters, respiratory mechanics, gas exchange in the lungs, pulmonary circulation, and other indicators. In this section, patients can undergo spirometry, spiroergometry, whole-body plethysmography, lung diffusion capacity measurement, and nonspecific and specific provocation tests. The department also has rooms for chest ultrasound scans and X-ray diagnostics. In cooperation with the Department of Cardiology, the specialists also carry out a catheter-based examination, namely right heart catheterization.

Endoscopic diagnostics is an integral part of the department's clinical practice. Endoscopic examinations of the respiratory organs are done in a specialized Section for Endoscopy equipped with state-of-the-art devices, including a fiberglass endoscope, a video bronchoscope, devices for endobronchial ultrasound and fluorescent bronchoscopy, an argon plasma projector, cryoprobes, an Nd-YAG laser, etc. Endoscopic diagnostics allow doctors to visually assess the condition of the upper and lower respiratory tracts from the inside and find pathological changes that cannot be detected using imaging examinations. Demanded procedures in the field of endoscopic diagnostics are biopsy of central and peripheral lung tumors, transbronchial needle biopsy, and bronchoalveolar lavage.

The Section for Endoscopy also performs effective therapeutic procedures, which are an excellent alternative to traumatic surgery. During endoscopy, the doctor does not dissect the skin and soft tissues. The department's specialists perform bronchoscopic interventions to remove foreign bodies from the respiratory tract, arrest internal hemorrhage, and eliminate airway stenosis. The Nd-YAG laser is used for the ablation of pathological lung lesions, including malignant tumors in the early stages. Argon plasma coagulation procedures are also successfully performed to destroy lung tumors and metastases.

The department's range of medical services includes:

• Diagnostics
  • Pulmonary function tests
    • Spirometry
    • Spiroergometry
    • Whole-body plethysmography
    • Lung diffusing capacity measurement
    • Respiratory drive and respiratory capacity (P0.1 and Pimax) measurements
    • Respiratory center sensitivity to CO2 assessment
    • Bronchoprovocation tests
    • Right heart catheterization with assessment of pulmonary circulation reactivity
    • Arterial blood gas analysis
    • Lactate test
    • Measurement of exhaled nitric oxide and carbon monoxide
  • Endoscopic diagnostics of the respiratory organs
    • Bronchoscopy with a biopsy of the central lung tumors
    • Bronchoscopy with a biopsy of the peripheral lung tumors
    • Bronchoscopy with transbronchial fine-needle aspiration biopsy
    • Bronchoalveolar lavage
  • Imaging diagnostics of the respiratory organs
    • Ultrasound scans
    • X-ray scans
    • CT and MRI scans (in cooperation with the Department of Radiology)
• Treatment
  • Drug therapy: pills, injections, and infusions
  • Endoscopic therapeutic procedures
    • Removal of foreign bodies from the respiratory tract
    • Hemostasis to arrest internal hemorrhage in the respiratory organs
    • Bronchoalveolar lavage
    • Placement of Polyflex, Dumon, Freitag, and Ultraflex stents to eliminate airway stenosis
    • Laser ablation
    • Argon plasma coagulation
• Other medical services