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Living with severe emphysema, Beaver County resident Donna Grable found it difficult to complete daily tasks like cooking and cleaning. Even worse, she could no longer do the things she enjoyed like spending quality time with her grandchildren. She found herself often out of breath and relied heavily on high levels of supplemental oxygen.
Severe emphysema is an advanced, progressive form of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that affects millions of Americans. While primarily caused by long-term smoking, emphysema can also be caused by prolonged exposure to air pollutants in the workplace and/or at home. The disease is marked by a significantly reduced breathing capacity that limits a person’s ability to live a healthy, active life.
Traditional treatments include the use of inhalers, oxygen therapy and/or participation in a pulmonary rehabilitation program. When these modalities prove to be insufficient, patients may be considered for lung volume reduction surgery to remove the damaged area of the lung, or even lung transplantation.
As an alternative to major surgery such as lung transplantation, AHN interventional pulmonologist Dr. Sohini Ghosh is among a small number of doctors in Pennsylvania offering patients access to a minimally invasive treatment for severe emphysema using the Zephyr® Endobronchial Valve from Pulmonx. The small, implantable valves are intended to target the most diseased parts of the lung and relieve breathing difficulty associated with the disease.
The valves are implanted into the lung airways using a flexible bronchoscope and with no incision required. They allow air that has become trapped in a diseased section of the lung to escape, reducing the hyperinflation in that lobe of the lung. This allows the healthier parts of the lung to function better and results in patients being able to breathe easier and experience less shortness of breath.
Since undergoing treatment by Dr. Ghosh with the Zephyr valves at Allegheny General Hospital, Grable reports great improvement in her ability to breathe, as well as improved oxygen levels. Most of all, she’s happy to be able to spend quality time with her grandchildren once again and to resume doing all the things she wasn’t able to do before her procedure.
Learn more about Donna’s story and how the Zephyr® valve works in the video below:
Donna Grable: You think to yourself, if I walk here, am I going to make it? If I go to the store, am I going to make it to the back of the store? Little by little, your breath goes away.
Dr. Sohini Ghosh: Some patients who have severe emphysema or severe COPD, the problem is that all this extra air is stuck in their lungs, and that affects their ability to breathe normally. The Zephyr® valve is a one-way endobronchial valve, and they allow air to escape from that diseased segment of the lung, but not re-enter it. That then allows that segment of the lung to shrink down and then improve someone’s shortness of breath by reducing that air trapping. Donna was one of our first valve patients that I met a couple years ago. She came in, had the procedure done, stayed with us for three days. She looked so much better at her follow-up appointment than her initial appointment.
Donna Grable: I can breathe, I can do normal things like everybody else can. Some of it’s bad, it’s like making dinner and stuff, but some of it’s really good.
Dr. Sohini Ghosh: She is still one of my favorite patients, and I don’t have to see her frequently, but I like her to just come and visit me.
Donna Grable: I say she is my life — she really turned my life around.
Dr. Sohini Ghosh: Zephyr® valves are new, so not everyone knows about it, and it’s not going to be the right answer for everyone, but education for physicians and for patients is really important.
Donna Grable: My cousin — her and I are the same age, and she had the same thing I did, COPD and emphysema. She died. Nobody ever gave her the opportunity to have the Zephyr® valve. To this day, I wish they could have told her, I wish she would have made it a little bit longer, because she was a sweet lady.
Dr. Sohini Ghosh: While the valves may not be the answer for everyone, I think it is a really good option for a large portion of patients who don’t know about them. So going in, learning about them, seeing if you’re a candidate, and advocating for yourself is the most important advice I can give any patient, whether they have COPD or some other type of disease.
Dr. Sohini Ghosh received her medical degree from Northeast Ohio Medical University in Rootstown, OH. She completed a residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University/University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Cleveland, OH. She furthered her training with a three-year fellowship in pulmonary and critical care and a second, one-year fellowship in interventional pulmonary, both at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Dr. Ghosh is a member of the American Association for Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology, the American Thoracic Society, and the American College of Chest Physicians. She has authored numerous articles, presented multiple abstracts for research, and has lectured to students and medical audiences around the country.
Watch Dr. Ghosh talk about an innovative treatment for severe emphysema in this 2023 "Eye on Health" interview segment.
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