The Division of Pediatric Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine provides comprehensive care to infants, children and adults with a full spectrum of respiratory disorders. The Division is committed to excellence and is nationally recognized for quality of patient care, education, research and advocacy. Care is guided in all age groups by the routine measurements of lung function, including pre-school age testing that is unique and unavailable at other pediatric centers. Disease-specific programs driven by pulmonary faculty include the Duke Cystic Fibrosis Center, the Duke Asthma, Allergy and Airway Diseases Center and the Duke Pediatric Sleep-Disordered Breathing Program. Comprehensive multi-disciplinary care is provided by physicians, nurse practitioners, nutritionists, physical therapists and social workers. The transitional program to adult care in cystic fibrosis was one of the first in the nation.
The Division provides teaching and training in pediatric pulmonology to medical students, residents and fellows and has conducted one of the Department of Pediatrics' annual post-graduate conferences, the Alexander Spock Symposium, for over thirty years. The fellowship training program, which is approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and leads to certification by the Subboard on Pulmonology of the American Board of Pediatrics, is designed to train future leaders in academic pediatric pulmonology. This training program consists of a year of clinical training and two years of either basic research or clinical/translational research. A fourth year of research training is available by application.
Faculty and fellows of the Division conduct a wide variety of basic and applied pulmonary research. Past and current participation in clinical trials sponsored by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutic Development Network has contributed to the establishment of current and future therapies. Clinical outcomes research currently focuses on bronchopulmonary dysplasia and cystic fibrosis. Recent translational work focuses on gastrin-releasing peptide as a biomarker for bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Basic research in the Division is supported by two R01 research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The focus of this research is on host-interactions with air pollution. This basic research is important to patients with cystic fibrosis, asthma and other bronchial diseases.
In addition, work at the
Duke Center for Pediatric Lung Disease focuses on the full spectrum of discovery from basic science and molecular research, to translation into animal models of disease, to first-in-human trials of new therapies. The research programs are multidisciplinary and traverse traditional clinical and basic science departmental boundaries. Areas of pediatric lung research at the Center currently include cystic fibrosis, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, asthma, and the pulmonary complications of environmental pollutants.
The Division is notably active locally, nationally, and internationally in its advocacy for pulmonary clinical, educational and research programs.
