Preface

Our book primarily focuses on various aspects of Interventional Pulmonology (IP). To ensure an easy learning process, we have included many interesting diagnostic and therapeutic airway and pleural procedure cases. Leading experts in the field of IP from Asia, Canada and the US have contributed various chapters.

Over the past 10 years, a lot of diagnostic and therapeutic innovations have taken place, paving the way for a significant boom in IP. The contents in our book have been divided into four different sections with a primary aim of case-based scenarios and solutions.

Section A consists of diagnostic IP procedures like linear and radial EBUS, navigation bronchoscopy, cryo lung biopsies and cone beam CT. We have included newer diagnostic modalities like cellvizio and robotic bronchoscopy as well.

Section B focuses on therapeutic rigid bronchoscopic procedures. Besides airway stenting and laser bronchoscopy, we have included recent interventions such as bronchial thermoplasty, bronchoscopic lung volume reduction, 3D printing and microwave ablation. Section C is dedicated to pleural procedures with the addition of the more recent ones such as indwelling pleural catheter (IPC) and fibrinolytics. Section D is dedicated to common paediatric IP procedures. The purpose of this book is not to provide the principles, theory or evidence of clinical practice of these procedures but to present actual case scenarios. We hope the book will complement the many IP books on the market that already cover the theory, principles and evidence of clinical practice.

Each case is presented with the history, including clinical, radiological, bronchoscopic/pleuroscopic findings and final outcomes. Many of these cases also have video illustration as well. As a mark of respect to our patients, privacy identifiers have been intentionally omitted in the text and video presentations. Learning points are highlighted at the end of the case presentation.

TFinally, we thank all the authors and co-authors for their hard work in making sure the work could be completed on time.