NCH Launches Interventional Pulmonology Program

with First Complex Airway Procedure

Paul Hilz
Naples Comprehensive Health
President & CEO

Naples Comprehensive Health (NCH) has reached an important milestone in advancing specialized respiratory care in Southwest Florida with the successful completion of our first complex central-airway procedure through our new Interventional Pulmonology Program. This first procedure represents an important step in expanding the specialized care we can provide to patients in our community, including advanced treatment for complex airway and pleural conditions that previously required some patients to travel outside Southwest Florida.

The procedure treated a patient with recurrent symptomatic benign tracheal stenosis, a condition in which scar tissue narrows the windpipe and can make breathing increasingly difficult. Symptoms can include shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing and may sometimes be mistaken for more common respiratory conditions.

Using interventional bronchoscopic techniques, Vanessa Hoytfox, MD, Director of the new NCH Interventional Pulmonology Program, along with the NCH endoscopy team accessed the narrowed section of the patient’s airway and treated the obstructing scar tissue from within the trachea. The minimally invasive approach restored the airway without an external incision. The patient responded well and returned home the same day.

For patients and families, the significance goes beyond the procedure itself. Specialized treatment for complexairway conditions has historically required patients in Southwest Florida to travel to medical centers outside our region. With the establishment of this program, that level of expertise is now available here at NCH.

Bronchoscopic treatment of benign tracheal stenosis is performed primarily at only select hospitals with dedicated interventional pulmonology expertise, like NCH now offers. Treatment can include precise incisions in the scar tissue, dilation of the narrowed airway and other techniques selected according to the location, length and complexity of the stenosis.

The procedure represents the first complex central-airway stenosis case completed at NCH and the first therapeutic case for the health system’s new Interventional Pulmonology Program.

Interventional pulmonology is a subspecialty requiring additional fellowship training following pulmonary and critical care medicine. It uses advanced minimally invasive procedures to diagnose and treat disorders involving the lungs, central airways and pleural space.

Our Interventional Pulmonology Program expands NCH’s capabilities in advanced bronchoscopy for lung nodules and mediastinal disease, as well as treatment for benign and malignant airway obstruction, tracheal stenosis, central-airway tumors and complex pleural conditions.

At NCH, we are continuing to build a health system capable of caring for increasingly complex conditions. This is exactly how NCH continues to advance care in our region: by recruiting physicians with highly specialized training and giving them the technology and resources needed to bring sophisticated treatment options to our community.

It also reflects the continued evolution of health care in Southwest Florida. The launch of this program is another step in that journey.