Referral for suspected Lung cancer will be accepted as normal
If unilateral moderate to large pleural effusion in chest radiograph referral to pleural clinic accepted for ambulatory management
Chronic Breathlessness and Chronic cough referrals: If there are no clinical Red Flag signs of cancer, Please give advice about life-style changes (stop smoking, keep exercising to lose weight if obese) and commence/continue best medical therapy.
Routine Lung function: testing is suspended due to risk of aerosol generation during the procedure.
Outpatient appointments – moved to telephone or video consultants currently, clinically reviewed and reduced throughput.
Lung Physiology currently providing a full service. The service is however running at a reduced capacity due to covid19, and cannot currently increase the capacity due to new recommended practices.
New referrals to the service will currently encounter an extended wait time due to 1. a backlog of requests due to suspension of service during the peak of the pandemic, 2. there being an extensive waiting list prior to the pandemic, and 3. the reduced capacity due to changes.
The Service is unable to accept referrals for Spirometry or full lung function tests directly; all referrals need to be made to the Respiratory Department in the normal way where appropriate triage of the referrals will occur prior to any requests for Spirometry/Lung Function being made.