• Episode 3 - Adult Clinical Approach
    Jun 1 2021
    Synopsis:In the 3rd part of our 3-Part Series on Ways to Attack Pulmonary Vascular Disease, Stanford Pulmonary Hypertension specialists Drs. Vinicio de Jesus Perez, Edda Spiekerkoetter & Andrew Sweatt discuss the adult clinical approach and ways the Wall Center is fighting pulmonary hypertension across multiple fronts. Vinicio de Jesus Perez, MD Edda Spiekerkoetter, MD Andrew John Sweatt, MD   Host: Welcome to the PH at Stanford Podcast. This new podcast series comes to you from the Vera Moulton Wall Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease at Stanford, with the goal to eradicate pulmonary vascular disease by discovering fundamental causes, developing innovative therapies, disseminating crucial knowledge, and delivering transformative care. Today, is the 3rd in a three-part COVID-related series on Ways to Attack Pulmonary Vascular Disease. Stanford PH Drs. Vinicio de Jesus Perez, Edda Spiekerkoetter, and Andrew John Sweatt, discuss the adult clinical approach and ways the Wall Center is fighting pulmonary hypertension across multiple fronts. Edda Spiekerkoetter, MD:My name is Dr. Edda Spiekerkoetter. I'm an adult pulmonologist at Stanford, and I'm treating patients with pulmonary hypertension and also have a basic research lab where I study the pathogenesis of pulmonary hypertension, right heart failure and vascular malformations in the lung. Andrew John Sweatt, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Andrew Sweatt. I'm also in the division of pulmonary and critical care at Stanford, treating adult patients with pulmonary hypertension and other general pulmonary conditions. And my clinical research focus is in pulmonary hypertension. Vinicio de Jesus Perez, MD: My name is Dr. Vinicio de Jesus Perez. Like my colleagues, I'm an adult pulmonary critical care specialists and physician scientist with expertise in pulmonary arterial hypertension and other pulmonary vascular disorders. Today, we're going to talk to you about what the Stanford Pulmonary Hypertension Program is doing to fight pulmonary hypertension across three fronts. Number one, the repurposing of drugs, discovery of biomarker through omics technologies and the use of wearables for monitoring pulmonary hypertension patients. I will start first by telling you about our work with wearables. This is work that has been done in partnership with our friends at phaware [global association], and it is a tool that will combine the use of the technology in the Apple watch together with an application developed with our colleagues at phaware, that will allow our patients to capture six minute walk data from the comfort of their living place, whether it's their home or their local park. Now, why is this important? Well, many of us have been affected by the COVID epidemic. As you all know, when you visit your physician, one of the key tests that the physician will offer is the six minute walk test. Why? It tells us how well your heart and lungs are working together. It also tells us whether the medications and interventions that we are offering you are having the expected impact. The problem being that with COVID is it has become incredibly hard to host patients in our clinic. The six minute walk test, is traditionally a test that has to be done in clinic under the supervision of a respiratory therapist and with a proper assessment of the pulmonary hypertension specialist. For many of us it's become very difficult to gauge how our patients are doing through video consultation in regards to the level of activity and how their medications are actually influencing that. To overcome that barrier, phaware and our group have partnered to test this new app, which is the phaware Walk.Talk.Track™. This is actually an app that works with the Apple watch, and it links wirelessly with your Apple phone. What the app does is it actually instructs you on how to capture a six minute walk test from the comfort of your home or any place locally where you can actually walk. It's simple. The app allows you to initiate the test, capture your symptoms, and then it tells you to walk for six minutes. It tells you when to rest. Once you're done, that information is uploaded to a cloud. That information comes to us using sophisticated algorithms that we have been developing. We can capture these numbers, your symptoms at rest, how much you walk, your heart rate, the changes in your heart rate. And, this information is captured on a daily basis, or as frequently as you can do. Now, why is that important? Because I'm not depending only on me seeing you every three months in order to know whether your functional capacity is improving or not, or maybe worsening. In an ideal situation where I have access to this technology, I can potentially identify a level of worsening that will prompt me to introduce a therapeutic intervention. For you, it means waiting less time in order to get the treatment that you require so that we can keep your quality of life and your level of function high, which is ...
    Show more Show less
    21 mins
  • Episode 2 - CRIB Team and Covid-19
    May 1 2021
    Synopsis: In the 2nd episode in our 3-Part Series on Ways to Attack Pulmonary Vascular Disease, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Drs. Shazia Bhombal, Mike Tracy, and Rachel Hopper, who developed the multidisciplinary Cardiac and Respiratory Care for Infants with BPD also known as neonatal chronic lung disease, discuss Stanford’s CRIB program and Covid-19. @StanfordChild Rachel Hopper, MD Michael Tracy, MD Shazia Bhombal, MD Host: Welcome to the PH at Stanford Podcast. This new podcast series comes to you from the Vera Moulton Wall Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease at Stanford, with the goal to eradicate pulmonary vascular disease by discovering fundamental causes, developing innovative therapies, disseminating crucial knowledge, and delivering transformative care. Today, is the 2nd in a three-part COVID-related series on Ways to Attack Pulmonary Vascular Disease. Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Drs. Shazia Bhombal, Mike Tracy and Rachel Hopper, who developed the multidisciplinary Cardiac and Respiratory Care Program for Infants with BPD also known as neonatal chronic lung disease, discuss Stanford’s CRIB program and Covid-19. Rachel Hopper, MD: My name is Rachel Hopper, I'm a pediatric cardiologist and pulmonary hypertension specialist at Stanford Children's Hospital, and co-director of the CRIB team. Michael Tracy, MD: Hi, my name is Michael Tracy, I'm a pediatric pulmonologist at Stanford Children's Hospital, and I am a co-director of the CRIB team. Shazia Bhombal, MD: Hi, my name is Shazia Bhombal, I'm a neonatologist and cardiologist at Stanford Children's Hospital, and I'm co-director of the CRIB team. We're really excited to talk to you all today about our CRIB program at Stanford Children's Hospital. And give you a little description to talk about prematurity, chronic lung disease and pulmonary hypertension. So, to start off we'll talk a little bit about prematurity. Babies generally need about 40 weeks to mature and be ready for being born. A premature baby is a baby born more than three weeks before their due date. In the U.S., about one in 10 babies are born preterm. In general, premature babies have more health problems and longer hospitalizations than babies born full term. Babies who are born preterm may not be fully developed at birth, and some need to spend time in the hospital after birth, in the neonatal intensive care unit for additional medical care, such as helping with breathing, feeding, and maintaining temperature. With advances in medical care babies are surviving earlier and earlier. Some babies in the hospital for days, weeks, some for months or even longer as they gain weight and learn to keep warm without help from the incubator, and learn to feed and breathe. Some may need to go home with special medical equipment, and will have continued close follow-up as they leave the hospital. One major complication of extreme prematurity is chronic lung disease, also called bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). Baby's lungs continue and develop and grow during the pregnancy, so when they're born early, their lungs may be underdeveloped. The higher risk of this can occur the earlier that they are born. In the United States, BPD impacts about 10,000 - 15,000 infants per year, and is diagnosed in about half of all infants weighing less than about two pounds at birth. Up to a quarter of these infants with BPD will develop pulmonary hypertension, or high blood pressure in the lungs. This causes extra work for the right side of the heart, as it pumps into the higher pressure of the lungs. And if untreated can cause heart failure and even death. Early diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary hypertension are important, as many patients respond well to therapies. Dr. Tracy and Dr. Hopper will explain more about lung disease and heart issues that can come up in premature babies. Michael Tracy, MD: So moving forward in talking more about what is BPD, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, again is a term used to describe long-term breathing problems in premature babies. It involves abnormal development of the lungs and in the most severe cases, the lungs can become scarred and inflamed. BPD was first defined at Stanford in 1967, though has changed substantially over the years. In particular the development of surfactant, which was administered to premature babies along with improved ventilators has very much changed this population and allowed younger premature infants to survive. The BPD we see now, again, develop some premature babies with underdeveloped lungs. It can also be called chronic lung disease or neonatal chronic lung disease. In the term bronchopulmonary, broncho refers to the airways, the bronchial tubes through which the oxygen breathe travels into the lungs and then pulmonary refers to the lungs, tiny air sacks or alveoli, where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged. Dysplasia, means abnormal changes in the structure or organization of a group of cells. And the cell ...
    Show more Show less
    22 mins
  • Episode 1 - Basic Science Approach
    Apr 1 2021
    Synopsis: In the 1st episode in our 3-Part Series on Ways to Attack Pulmonary Vascular Disease, Stanford researchers Astrid Gillich, PhD and Ross Metzger, PhD explore the basic science approach and discuss their discovery of two capillary cell types. Astrid Gillich, PhD Ross Metzger, PhD Host:Welcome to the PH at Stanford Podcast. This new podcast series comes to you from the Vera Moulton Wall Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease at Stanford, with the goal of addressing specific research efforts, educational programs, and advancements in treatment and patient care. Today, is the first in a three-part COVID-related series on Ways to Attack Pulmonary Vascular Disease. Stanford researchers, Astrid Gillich, PhD and Ross Metzger, PhD, will be giving us a closer look at our lungs, discussing their discovery of two capillary cell types, as they explore the basic science approach of their research. Astrid Gillich, PhD:Hello, everyone. My name is Astrid Gillich. I'm a basic scientist at Stanford University. I am part of the Wall Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease and today I am very excited to talk to you about our work on the blood vessels of the lung. Ross Metzger, PhD:Hi, I'm Ross Metzger. I am also a researcher doing basic research in the Wall Center at Stanford. I began studying the lung more than 20 years ago as a graduate student in the lab of Mark Krasnow who's now the executive director of the Wall Center. And the work that we're going to tell you about is a collaboration between my lab and Mark's. Astrid Gillich, PhD:Our lung is really important, because it functions to bring oxygen into our body, which we need for our cells to survive and function properly. The lung has an extremely complicated architecture to accommodate a really large surface, about half the size of a tennis court. With every breath we take, air enters our lung and travels through a series of branched tubes, and there are literally millions of them, to the interior of the organ, where it reaches tiny air sacs called alveoli. Here, oxygen is transferred across an extremely thin membrane into the blood, and is carried by red blood cells to every part of our body. We refer to this process where oxygen moves into the blood and carbon dioxide is eliminated as gas exchange. The alveoli are the sites of gas exchange. So what is an alveolus? An alveolus is essentially a tiny pocket with an opening in walls that are extremely thin to allow efficient transfer of oxygen into the blood. The pocket is made up of cells. These are epithelial cells and we know that there are two types, and they have very distinct structures and functions. Each of these pockets is surrounded by a network of tiny blood vessels, the capillaries. The capillaries are tubes, they are composed of endothelial cells, so they are the cells that make up the walls of the vessels and they are filled with blood. The two layers of cells, the endothelial cells of the capillaries, and the epithelial cells of the alveolus are closely aligned to form the air-blood barrier. The structure of the air-blood barrier is altered and gas exchange is compromised in many different lung diseases, including acute diseases, chronic diseases, and including COVID-19. Ross Metzger, PhD:Alveoli were discovered in the 17th century by Marcello Malpighi in Bologna in Italy. Malpighi was using the microscopes of his time when he made these remarkable drawings of the alveoli. What he was really fascinated by, and you can really see this in the drawings, is the architecture of the alveoli, this remarkable structure of the lung. He was really the first to appreciate that. He was interested in trying to understand from what he could see what he could learn about the function of the lung. Malpighi was not only the first to discover the alveoli, but he was the first to discover and he also drew the capillaries surrounding these pockets and that work really inaugurated lung biology, basic research into understanding the structural basis of lung function. Of course, since Malpighi, there have been remarkable advances. We have a great understanding of the physiology of the lung. A lot of this has been made possible by technologies that didn't exist in the 17th century. Even the structure of the air-blood barrier, the cellular basis for gas exchange, has been really carefully worked out. These are discoveries that have saved lives, and these are the discoveries that can now be found in the textbooks. When we started our work, the alveolar capillaries, on the blood side of the air-blood barrier, had been much less well studied than the epithelial cells on the air side. According to this textbook account of the lung, there's a single capillary cell type in the alveolar capillaries, and that in fact is thought to be true for capillaries or really blood vessels throughout our bodies. In blood vessels people had thought that cells that sit next to each other were the same cell type, and that's different from...
    Show more Show less
    14 mins