Respiratory Exchange

July 9, 2025

Building a POCUS Powerhouse: Point-of-Care Ultrasound Workflow, Training and Innovation in Pulmonary Critical Care

Discover how Cleveland Clinic transformed a single ultrasound machine into a cutting-edge, hospital-wide Point-of-Care Ultrasonography (POCUS) program that now performs thousands of cardiac, lung, and vascular ultrasounds annually. In this episode, Drs. Ajit Moghekar and Siddharth Dugar detail their journey from early adoption to national leadership in POCUS, including its critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic and its integration into Epic and PACS for real-time clinical decision-making. Learn how they've overcome barriers in training, quality assurance and workflow optimization to standardize and scale across regional ICUs. The discussion also explores advanced applications like TEE during cardiac arrest, novel diagnostics in ARDS and sepsis phenotyping, and how AI and wearable ultrasound tech are set to revolutionize critical care. If you're invested in elevating bedside care with innovative imaging, this is the podcast for you.

May 20, 2025

Relieving the Chronic Cough Burden: From Expert Evaluation to Emerging Therapies

Chronic cough is an often-misunderstood condition that places a significant quality of life burden on patients and their loved ones. For providers, this complex condition requires more than just symptom management-it calls for expert, patient-centered evaluation. In this podcast, Dr. Rachel Taliercio and Dr. Michael Ghobrial discuss how early referral to a specialized chronic cough clinic can reduce unnecessary testing, avoid treatment delays and uncover treatable causes that are often missed. They review how thoughtful history-taking and using guideline-based diagnostics can improve outcomes. They assess promising new medication trials, and how innovations like AI-powered cough monitoring and Behavioral Cough Suppression Therapy are transforming chronic cough care.

March 26, 2025

Treating CTEPH: Surgery, Medication or Balloon Angioplasty?

In this episode of Respiratory Exchange, titled "Treating CTEPH: Surgery, Medication or Balloon Angioplasty?" Dr. Gustavo Heresi and Dr. Alice Goyanes discuss specialized, dedicated treatment options for chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH), a type of pulmonary vascular disease. They review when pulmonary endarterectomy is appropriate. They also discuss treatment options for patients who are not candidates for surgery, such as those with decompensated cirrhosis or metastatic cancer. For those patients, they consider the options such as using the FDA-approved vasodilator, Riociguat, and balloon angioplasty. They also note the benefits of discussion with vascular medicine and hematology.

January 22, 2025

Relationship Between Intermittent Hypoxia, COPD and Comorbidities

Dr. Amy Attaway and Dr. Dan Culver review the emerging relationship between COPD patients who have intermittent hypoxemia and an increase they have in co-morbidities and mortality. They discuss how multiple associative studies suggest that intermittent hypoxemia may impact musculature, cardiovascular and neurologic systems. Dr. Attaway and Dr. Culver also underscore the need to review studies in light of the impact of skin pigmentation on oximetry, the connection to Sarcopenia and a related shift in muscle fibers from Type 1 to Type 2.