Cadre Respiratory Medicine Department

The Department of Geriatric Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine of the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University was established in 1984. It is the country's first doctoral program in geriatric medicine; a designated institution under the National Clinical Key Specialty Development Project; a provincial key discipline; a key specialty of the Provincial Health Commission; a training base for specialist physicians in respiratory rehabilitation; and the Anhui Branch of the National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Diseases.

The department currently has 56 health technical staff, including 18 doctors, 1 researcher, 5 doctoral supervisors, 8 master's supervisors, 14 doctoral degree holders, 5 master's degree holders, 4 chief physicians, and 8 associate chief physicians; as well as 38 nurses, including 5 with senior professional titles and 23 with intermediate professional titles.

The department comprises 3 wards (the Geriatric Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine Ward, Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine West Ward 1, and West Ward 2), and has an independent respiratory endoscopy diagnosis and treatment center and a respiratory rehabilitation ward.

Specialized Technologies

The department has a total of 90 beds, sees more than 20,000 outpatient visits annually, and admits 3,400 inpatients each year. It routinely performs painless bronchoscopy, bronchoscopic argon plasma coagulation (APC), high-frequency electrocoagulation, electrosurgical snare resection, stent placement, endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS), rigid bronchoscopy, minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures using medical thoracoscopy, CT-guided lung puncture, radiofrequency ablation, and particle implantation; it has recently introduced new technologies such as HybridKnife, whole-lung alveolar lavage, and photodynamic therapy. It was the first in the province to provide respiratory rehabilitation, introduced an Internet of Things respiratory rehabilitation system, and uses artificial intelligence to follow up patients receiving home-based respiratory rehabilitation after discharge.

Department Honors

Radiofrequency ablation was recognized as one of the hospital's inaugural Top Ten Advanced Technologies; the department has won awards multiple times in national respiratory rehabilitation case competitions; it has published more than 10 SCI papers with an impact factor of 10 or higher or ranked in Zone 1; received multiple Provincial Science and Technology Progress Awards and 1 Teaching Achievement Award; and been recognized as an Advanced Collective of the hospital and an Advanced Collective of the province for epidemic prevention and control.