Needed: A new specialty — respiratory therapy

CRF director Dr Sundeep Salvi said lack of inter-departmental exposure during postgraduate training renders a chest physician less confident of managing other systemic diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure. Same is true of students training in general medicine who do not get adequate training in management of respiratory diseases and leave it to the chest physician. There are fewer chest physicians than internal medicine specialists.

Most department heads were of the opinion that both these specialties should get inter-departmental rotational postings of 4 to 6 months. Once there are more and more internal medicine and general practitioners handling the huge burden of common respiratory diseases like asthma,COPD,Tuberculosis etc,the two specialties could be merged and pulmonology would then exist as a superspecialty like cardiology,endocrinology and neurology. Doctors urged regular upgrade of teachers’ technical as well as training to make them better educators.

The meeting discussed current status of respiratory postgraduate departments in India with respect to patient care,PG education and original research. They pointed out increasing prevalence of common lung-related problems like asthma,chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,TB,diffuse lung diseases and said care given to respiratory illnesses was poor in the country although it is one of the leading manufacturers of generic drugs for illnesses related to the lungs.