Course Category: Expert Talk

This webinar focuses on the baseline assessment of shortness of breath and the association with early or established interstitial lung disease.

Learning Objectives

1. Assessment of shortness of breath
2. Awareness and assessment of ILD
3. Necessary tools for evaluating patients with early or established ILD in the primary care
4. Comorbidities in ILD and their assessment
5. Effect of treatments in ILD and their monitoring in the primary care

Dr Vasilis Kouranos Background

Dr Vasilis Kouranos is highly specialised in pulmonary fibrosis and interstitial lung diseases such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, hypersensitivity pneumonitis and connective tissue disease-associated interstitial lung diseases at Royal Brompton Hospital.

He has sub-specialist expertise in sarcoidosis and particularly cardiac sarcoidosis, which was the subject of his PhD thesis. He also offers clinical support for sarcoidosis and ILD patients with lung cancer.

This Grand Round presented by Dr Amanda Sathyapala focuses on CPAP adherence in patient with obstructive sleep apnea.

Dr Amanda Sathyapala Background

Dr Amanda Sathyapala is a consultant respiratory physician, and clinical lead of the home ventilation service at Harefield hospital.

She is also a senior lecturer in the airways disease section of the National Heart and Lung Institute of Imperial College London.

Her clinical expertise includes respiratory failure, particularly chronic ventilatory failure requiring non-invasive ventilation, as a result of conditions such as COPD, bronchiectasis, chest wall disease, lung fibrosis, or following surgery. She also specialises in diagnosis and management of respiratory muscle weakness as well as sleep-disordered breathing, such as obstructive sleep apnoea and obesity hypoventilation syndrome.

She is one of only a few respiratory physicians delivering cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia.

The webinar will focus on case studies highlighting the differential diagnosis of chronic cough in the context of chest infections and conditions that mimic infection both clinically and radiologically.

Learning objectives:

1. To understand that broader causes of chronic cough
2. To understand the diagnostic pathway of chronic cough
3. To learn when chest infections are drivers of chronic cough
4. To understand mimics of chest infections presenting with chronic cough

Dr Ricardo Jose Background 

Dr Ricardo Jose is a consultant in respiratory medicine experienced in all aspects of respiratory medicine. He has particular expertise in complex respiratory infections, bronchiectasis and respiratory disease associated with cancer therapy and runs a dedicated clinic for respiratory infection and disease management in patients with primary and secondary immunodeficiency.

This talk presented by Dr Hatem Soliman Aboumarie focuses on lung ultrasound in acute care.

Dr Hatem Soliman Aboumarie Background

Dr Hatem Aboumarie is a consultant in cardiothoracic intensive care, clinical lead for organ donation and clinical lead for advanced critical care practitioners at Harefield Hospital. In addition to this role, he is an honorary senior lecturer at the School of Cardiovascular Medicine and Sciences at King’s College London.

Dr Hatem Aboumarie’s clinical expertise includes:

1. critical care management of various cardiac and respiratory disorders
2. management of patients on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation for respiratory failure and cardiogenic shock
3. management of different modalities of mechanical circulatory support including long-term left ventricular assist devices
4. management of heart and lung transplantation
5. expert application of echocardiography and point of care ultrasound in the intensive care unit.

This Grand Round presented by Professor Gisli Jenkins will look into the road-map to precision medicine in pulmonary fibrosis.

Professor Gisli Jenkins Background

Professor Gisli Jenkins clinical focus is on interstitial lung disease and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in particular. Currently, he is the Familial Pulmonary Fibrosis lead for the Genomics England Clinical Interpretation Partnership in Respiratory Medicine and is Post Hospitalisation (PHOSP)-COVID study Fibrosis Working Group lead, also leading the UK interstitial Lung Disease consortium.

He is an NIHR research professor and holds the Margaret Turner-Warwick chair of thoracic medicine at Imperial College London. Professor Jenkins is the head of the Margaret Turner-Warwick Centre for Fibrosing Lung Diseases at the National Heart and Lung Institute.

He is the pulmonary fibrosis working group lead for the Genomics England Clinical Interpretation Partnership in Respiratory Medicine, the PHOSP-COVID study and the HEAL COVID platform study.

This talk focuses on endothelial studies focusing on patients with chronic lung disorders such as COPD or IPF.

Learning objectives

1. Role of endothelium in chronic lung disease
2. Endothelial studies using endothelial progenitors (ECFC)
3. Endothelial dysfunction in COPD – studies using ECFC

Dr Koralia Paschalaki Background

Dr Koralia Paschalaki is a respiratory physician and Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the National Heart and Lung Institute. Her research is focused on the molecular mechanisms of endothelial dysfunction and vascular disease in patients with chronic lung disorders, including COPD and IPF. Using circulating endothelial progenitors, she has provided the first evidence of accelerated endothelial ageing (senescence) due to epigenetic dysfunction in patients with COPD, providing novel insights into the development of cardiovascular disease in this group. Her research work, employing primary endothelial cells and advanced organ-on-a-chip platforms, is currently funded by BHF, NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and pharma.

This Grand Round presented by Dr Freda Yang focuses on severe asthma exacerbation. The key question she explored: “Are we ready to take a personalised approach to treating severe asthma exacerbations?”.

Dr Freda Yang Background

Dr Freda Yang is an Academic Clinical Lecturer at the Airways Disease Section of the National Heart and Lung Institute and a Specialty Trainee in Respiratory and Internal Medicine at Imperial College Hospitals NHS Trust.
She has an MBChB and MD from the University of Glasgow, where she undertook her postgraduate research training. Her MD, funded by the MRC UK Refractory Asthma Stratification Programme (RASP-UK) led by Professor Liam Heaney, generated novel findings on the role of oral corticosteroids in biologic-treated patients with severe asthma, and risk factors for exacerbations in biologic-naïve patients. She joined Dr Chloe Bloom’s group in 2023 to study asthma using large clinical data. Her research interests are in phenotyping severe asthma, and understanding the causes of severe exacerbations and factors that lead to the development of severe asthma.

This Grand Round, presented by Dr Ranil de Silva, focuses on ‘Coronary sinus reducer for the treatment of angina and coronary microvascular dysfunction’.

Dr Ranil de Silva Background

Dr Ranil de Silva is a consultant interventional cardiologist and leads the specialist angina service at Royal Brompton Hospital, where he treats private and NHS patients.

In 1995, he graduated with honours from King’s College London with a degree in medicine. Following that he completed his training in general medicine, general cardiology and interventional cardiology at Royal Brompton, Chelsea and Westminster, Hammersmith, and St Mary’s hospitals in London.

He conducted his PhD research at the Medical Research Council Cyclotron Unit, Hammersmith Hospital, London, and at the Research Institute for Brain and Blood Vessels in Akita, Japan.

In particular, his research areas include: refractory angina, coronary microvascular dysfunction, coronary plaque biomechanics, novel cardiac magnetic resonance imaging techniques for the study of adverse left ventricular remodelling.