Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy & Sleep Medicine

The Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy and Sleep Medicine at MUSC is firmly committed to excellence in clinical care, education, and research. 

Education

A major focus of the Division is training the next generation of leaders in pulmonary and critical care medicine. Under the leadership of Drs. Nick Pastis and Edward Kilb, our PCCM Fellowship Program provides outstanding clinical training leading to Board eligibility in both Pulmonary Medicine and Critical Care Medicine. The fellowship program offers customizable schedules to train physician-scientists and clinician educators, a separate one-year critical care fellowship provides clinical training leading to Board eligibility in Critical Care medicine to eligible fellows who have completed additional subspecialty training. Daily conferences are dedicated to clinical topics, research, or career development. We pride ourselves in providing robust and productive mentoring for all of our fellows.

Research

The investigative programs of the Division seek to increase our understanding of lung biology and disease, and utilize state of the art approaches ranging from molecular biology to clinical trials. We constantly strive to translate discoveries made at the bench into practices that will benefit patients. Major research interests include lung injury and repair, fibrotic lung disorders, lung cancer, cystic fibrosis and health services research. Our clinical research programs participate in a number of national and international research networks including the NIH-funded "Genomic Research in Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency and Sarcoidosis (GRADS) Study", and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's Therapeutics Development Network.

Patient Care

With a team of nationally renowned faculty, the Division offers a wide range of clinical services including general and specialized ambulatory clinics, in-patient pulmonary consultation, interventional bronchoscopy, and critical care services. In addition, it provides multi-disciplinary comprehensive clinical-research centers related to interstitial lung diseases, sarcoidosis, rare lung diseases, atypical mycobacterial diseases, cystic fibrosis, lung transplantation, and the evaluation of sleep-disordered breathing, among many others. Outreach clinics in Mount Pleasant and North Charleston extend pulmonary care to patients in the region. The Division has been regularly listed in the top hospitals by U.S. News & World Report and takes great pride in providing outstanding clinical care to all of our patients.

We are focused on improving the health of our community. Under the leadership of Drs. Dee Ford and Kathryn Cristaldi, MUSC was named one of two National Telehealth Center of Excellence in the country. We have developed a unique multimodal program, ICU Innovations, to improve delivery of critical care throughout South Carolina. Our Tele-ICU program has transformed care through continuous patient monitoring of partner hospital ICU patients by MUSC Health and Advanced ICU Care intensivists and nursing staff. This transformational program uses proactive technological and medical advances to leverage remote clinical expertise and decision support to improve patient outcomes and support ICU clinicians in partner hospitals.