The pulmonology team at Stanford Health Care is constantly working to bring medical innovation to the entire spectrum of lung diseases—from life threatening conditions like pulmonary embolisms to persistent problems like chronic cough. So no matter what state of health you’re in, we can help.

An innovative treatment option with great results

Patients with the most severe asthma, who do not have good management of their disease using prescription inhalers, have a new medical treatment option to manage their disease. Interventional pulmonologists at Stanford can heat up a patient’s airways to treat their asthma in a procedure called bronchial thermoplasty.

Doctors guide a thin tube called a bronchoscope into a patient’s airways and heat them to 149 degrees, warm enough to shrink the smooth muscle in the airways that swell during an asthma attack. After this procedure, asthma patients suffer fewer or no attacks and are hospitalized less often.