What is Bronchoscopy?
Bronchoscopy is a procedure which helps your doctor to look into your breathing tubes.This procedure is done by trained specialist called as Bronchoscopist.
Bronchoscope is a long thin flexible tube with a small video camera and light at the end. By adjusting carious control of bronchoscope your doctor can guide it in any direction to look inside breathing tubes
Bronchocopy can be done under Local anaesthesia with or without sleeping medicines (sedation) as per patient clinical profile
Indications for bronchoscopy: Why do I need a bronchoscopy?
⇒ Infections: To get cough samples
⇒ Lung spot: Abnormal X-ray chest or CT scan
⇒ Lung collapse
⇒ Bleeding: When a patient has coughed up blood, bronchoscopy can help the doctor find cause of the bleeding
⇒ Noisy breathing and airway narrowing
Preprocedure Checklist
- Fasting for 6 hours before the procedure or as instructed by your doctor
- Do not take medicines for Diabetes or please confirm with your doctor
- Can take blood pressure medicines with sips of water in the morning
- For heart patient you need to take opinion of your cardiologist before undergoing bronchoscopy or before stopping any medicines for lung biopsy
- Please remove your dentures and nose ring before the procedure
- Please inform your doctor about drug allergy mainly lignocaine allergy if you have
- Please get all OPD papers/X-ray/CT Scan/blood reports on the day of procedure
- Please get your family member or relative on the day of procedure
- You will not be allowed to drive vehicle after the procedure as we may use sleeping medicines for some patients during procedure
- Post procedure you will be kept fasting for 2 hours and as per your clinical condition, procedure performed we will plan your discharge
- Time to time your family member will be updated about your condition and procedure
What happens during Bronchoscopy?
Once you are in endoscopy room your doctor will again explain you about the procedure
Once you are fully relaxed, bronchoscope is placed through the nose or mouth, then advanced slowly down the back of throat, through vocal cords and then into the airways or wind pipe
Procedure is relatively quick and around 15 to 30 mins ,however time may vary depending on how long it take for medicines to take effect and the reason for procedure.
Various procedures which can be done with Bronchoscope
Bronchoalveolar lavage:[BAL] :Taking cough samples from lung Infections / Cancer/ Interstitial lung disease
Lung biopsies: Endobronchial biopsy / Transbronchial lung biopsy Infection/ Lung camcer / interstitial lung disease
Bronchoscopic interventions: Airway dilatation / stenting / electrosurgery / APC / Cryotherapy / Laser / tumour debulking / glue application etc
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