Our thoracic medicine team offers a wide range of diagnostic services and treatments for adult lung disease for the whole population of SASH.

Our thoracic medicine team offers a wide range of diagnostic services and treatments for adult lung disease for the population of Surrey & Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust (SASH).

We treat a wide range of respiratory conditions including:

· Asthma

· Bronchiectasis

· COPD

· Interstitial lung diseases

· lung and pleural cancers

· Pulmonary embolism

· Pulmonary hypertension

· Pulmonary infections, such as TB and pneumonia

· Respiratory failure

· Sleep apnoea

In-patient care is at East Surrey Hospital only, while outpatient clinics are held at both East Surrey, Crawley and Horsham hospitals. Dr Simon Bax works with the Royal Brompton Hospital managing patients with interstital lung diseases locally and at Royal Brompton and Dr Jenny Bacon works with the Royal Brompton hospital, managing patients with pulmonary hypertension locally. We have a large sleep and ventilation service treating over 2500 patients with sleep disordered breathing including over 300 patients on home ventilator therapy.

Patients requiring thoracic surgery are referred by our thoracic surgery consultants who hold a clinic at East Surrey Hospital on Tuesday mornings. Surgery is carried out at St George’s Hospital.

Respiratory nurses

We have a team of Respiratory Clinical Nurse specialists who are predominantly based at our East Surrey Hospital site reviewing respiratory inpatients, working with

our respiratory wards, the wider respiratory team and acute medical team. The nurses review patients with conditions such as COPD, Asthma, ILD and Bronchiectasis and will routinely review patients with an exacerbation of COPD and an exacerbation of Asthma, which is audited.

Our nursing team also run outpatient clinics, both face to face and virtually. This includes an Oxygen assessment service which integrates with the community services covering the catchment of SASH, nebulised Colomycin initiation post Consultant assessment and provision of respiratory management plans/ patient education.

Contact details: Monday – Friday 8am – 4pm

TB team:

Telephone: 01737 768511 extension 6629 Referrals: sash.tbteam@nhs.net

Respiratory specialist nurses 01737 768511 x 2961 sash.respiratorynurses@nhs.net

Respiratory secretaries:

01737 768 511 extension 2908

Email: sash.respiratorysecretaries@nhs.net

Patient information

Suspected active TB referral pathway

Advice to patients on managing daily tasks

Useful websites

British Lung Foundation

Asthma UK

Macmillan Cancer Support

Pulmonary Hypertension Association UK

VTE/Pulmonary embolism information

Thrombosis UK

VTE prevention – NHS England

TB information

TB Alert

The Truth About TB

Smoking cessation service

A respiratory nurse specialist meets with all respiratory patients who smoke to provide advice on how to stop and help them to identify short-term and long term goals.