St. Vincent Services Respiratory Care
St. Vincent Respiratory Services

Respiratory Services

What is a Respiratory Care Practitioner?

Respiratory care practitioners work to evaluate, treat, and care for patients with breathing disorders. Those people include patients with chronic lung problems such as asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema but they also include heart attack and accident victims, premature infants, and people with cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, or AIDS. 

Patients with respiratory-related sleep disorders receive additional evaluation through the HSHS St. Vincent Hospital Sleep Disorder Center. A pulmonary rehabilitation program aids patients in improving quality of life and functional abilities.

Respiratory care practitioners perform procedures that are both diagnostic and therapeutic. 

Diagnosis

 

  • Obtain sputum samples

  • Perform Pulmonary Function Tests (PFTs) to determine lung function/impairment

  • Study disorders of people with disruptive sleep patterns like Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)

Treatment

 

  • Utilizing various types of highly sophisticated equipment to administer oxygen or to assist with breathing

  • Employing mechanical ventilation in treating patients who cannot breathe adequately on their own

  • Monitoring and managing therapy that will help a patient recover lung function

  • Administering medications in aerosol form to help alleviate breathing problems and to help prevent respiratory infections

  • Maintaining a patient’s artificial airway, one that may be in place to help the patient who can’t breathe through normal means

  • Educating the patient about their disease process and treatments their physician has prescribed