Revolutionary Treatment for Patients With Severe Asthma Available at LDS Hospital

The workshop will feature LDS Hospital interventional pulmonologist James Pearl, MD, who will unveil new treatment options for dealing with severe asthma, including lifestyle changes, medications, and a revolutionary and long-lasting new procedure called bronchial thermoplasty. 

Everyone who’s affected by severe asthma, including people who have it and those who love them, are invited. There’s no need to RSVP, but if you have questions, please call LDS Hospital at 801.408.1285. 

Nearly 180,000 adults and 60,000 children have asthma in Utah. The disease results in nearly 1,500 hospitalizations and more than 7,000 trips to the emergency room each year, according to the Utah Department of Health. It also results in nearly 3,500 deaths a year nationally. 

To understand what it’s like to have asthma, take in a deep breath and hold it; then without letting any air out, take another deep breath and hold that. Physically your brain wants to breathe in deeper but what your body needs is to exhale. 

But bronchial thermoplasty, which has been studied and tested at LDS Hospital, provides a new treatment option for patients with severe asthma. 

BT therapy uses mild heat energy to treat the airways of the lung, reducing the ability of airway muscle spasms to obstruct the airway, allowing patients to breathe more freely. It is designed for adults who struggle to control their asthma with standard asthma medication. 

“Until now, medication has been pretty much our only tool for fighting severe asthma. But some people don’t respond well to the drugs we use. For those people, this technology may reduce life-threatening episodes of severe asthma,” says Dr. Pearl. 

The procedure is minimally invasive and begins when a physician inserts a small bronchoscope through the patient's mouth or nose and into the lungs. The tip of the catheter is expanded to contact the walls of the targeted airways. Controlled bursts of mild heat are then delivered. The procedure is performed under moderate sedation or light anesthesia, and the patient typically goes home the same day.