Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine

The Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (Department of Respiratory Medicine) of Peking University Third Hospital is a discipline that integrates medical care, scientific research and teaching and possesses an advanced domestic level. In 2012 it was selected into the National Clinical Key Specialty Construction Project, and in 2018 it was assessed as an "Excellent Unit for the Standardized Construction of the National Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine Discipline among Tertiary Hospitals".

The establishment of the Department of Respiratory Medicine of Peking University Third Hospital began with the tracheitis clinic in the 1970s; in 1977 the respiratory specialty group was set up; in the 1980s the Department of Respiratory Medicine was formally established, a bronchoscopy room was created, fiberoptic bronchoscopy and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid examination were carried out, and a respiratory laboratory was set up. In 1983 a pulmonary function laboratory was established, making the department one of the earlier departments in China to carry out standardized pulmonary function testing. In 1988 it took the lead in Beijing in carrying out medical thoracoscopy. In 2001 a sleep apnea monitoring room was established. The respiratory critical care specialty began in 1978 with the use of Bird ventilators to treat respiratory failure caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); in 1995 the Respiratory Intensive Care Unit (RICU) was established with 6 beds, equipped with advanced ventilators and monitors; subsequently the RICU was expanded, and in 2015 it became a 26-bed Medical/Respiratory Intensive Care Unit (MICU/RICU), serving as the hospital-wide platform for the treatment of internal medicine critical illnesses.

The Department of Respiratory Medicine currently has more than 30 physicians, including 13 with senior professional titles and 11 with deputy senior professional titles. There are 3 respiratory therapists, 6 technicians and 95 nurses. There are 7 doctoral supervisors and 10 master's supervisors. A number of experts concurrently serve as vice chairpersons, secretary-generals, standing committee members, committee members and group committee members in academic organizations at various levels in China.

The Department of Respiratory Medicine has general wards (74 beds, of which 60 beds are in the main campus and 14 beds in the North Campus), a Medical/Respiratory Intensive Care Unit (26 beds), an outpatient clinic, a pulmonary function laboratory, a bronchoscopy room, a sleep medicine center/sleep apnea monitoring room, a nebulization treatment room, and the respiratory specialty of drug clinical trials together with a laboratory. The respiratory endoscopy specialty group has successively carried out whole-lung lavage, endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS), electromagnetic navigation bronchoscopy, bronchoscopy under general anesthesia and various interventional diagnostic and therapeutic techniques. The pulmonary function specialty group has carried out exercise pulmonary function testing, bronchial provocation testing, nasal exhaled nitric oxide (NO) measurement and other techniques. The respiratory critical care specialty group has carried out extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), transpulmonary pressure monitoring, critical care ultrasound, electrical impedance tomography (EIT), bedside blood purification, pulse index continuous cardiac output monitoring (PiCCO) and other critical care diagnostic and therapeutic techniques.

The outpatient volume of the Department of Respiratory Medicine exceeds 100,000 visits per year; it has opened specialty and specialized clinics for COPD, asthma, smoking cessation, lung cancer, sleep-disordered breathing, pulmonary vascular disease and consultation for difficult chest diseases; it leads the multidisciplinary team (MDT) work for pulmonary nodules, asthma and allergic diseases, and interstitial lung disease/pulmonary fibrosis. The general wards discharge more than 2,000 patients per year, and the MICU/RICU admits more than 600 critically ill patients per year. It admits common respiratory diseases, multidisciplinary difficult diseases, rare/uncommon diseases and internal medicine critical illnesses. Diagnosed and treated cases have repeatedly won the hospital's "Excellent Award for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Difficult and Critically Ill Cases" and have been presented at domestic and international academic conferences and in professional journals. Its medical service capability has been recognized by peers and patients, ranking 8th among the best specialties in China according to the Peking University Health Science Center and among the top three specialties in the DRGs evaluation of secondary and higher hospitals in Beijing. It has repeatedly participated in the prevention and control of respiratory disease epidemics, medical support for major national events and support for primary-level medical care; especially in the fight against SARS (2003), influenza A (2009) and COVID-19 (2020), a number of experts were selected into national and Beijing expert groups, joined national medical teams, and took part in the formulation of policies and diagnosis and treatment protocols of the National Health Commission and in patient consultations.

The Department of Respiratory Medicine is a doctoral degree granting point and a postdoctoral workstation; it has graduated more than 100 doctoral and master's students and currently has more than 30 doctoral and master's students in training. Each year it trains more than 10 visiting physicians from all over the country. It has successively undertaken a number of national continuing education projects such as "Differential Diagnosis of Pulmonary Shadows", "New Advances in Chronic Airway Diseases" and "Multidisciplinary Diagnosis and Treatment Forum of Respiratory Diseases". In 2017 it became one of the first national training bases for specialists in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine (PCCM), enrolling students nationwide. The Department of Respiratory Medicine is now a doctoral degree authorization point of Peking University in the first-level discipline of medical technology.

The Department of Respiratory Medicine has long adhered to attaching equal importance to clinical work and scientific research; with respect to chronic respiratory diseases, especially COPD, its research in epidemiology, clinical diagnosis and treatment, pathogenesis and comorbidities has consistently been at the domestic leading level. In 2022, together with the affiliated hospitals and co-constructed/teaching hospitals of Peking University, the School of Basic Medical Sciences, the School of Public Health and other related disciplines, it established the Center for Chronic Airway Disease Research of the Peking University Health Science Center. In 2024, under the leadership of our department and with the participation of thoracic surgery, rehabilitation medicine, occupational medicine, cardiology, radiology and traditional Chinese medicine, the respiratory (COPD) "1+N" discipline cluster model was approved as a National Clinical Key Specialty Construction Project. In the direction of respiratory tract infections, a series of in-depth studies have been conducted on clinical characteristics, etiology, bacterial resistance, and population pharmacokinetics/clinical pharmacodynamics of antibacterial drugs. As one of the responsible units, it has successively undertaken the National "10th Five-Year Plan" and "11th Five-Year Plan" science and technology key projects and topics of the key research and development projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology; it has undertaken research projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation, the Capital Medical Development Research Fund, the Peking University 985 Project, the US NIH, and the Joint Institute of the Peking University Health Science Center and the University of Michigan Medical School. The respiratory specialty of drug clinical trials, established in 1998, is one of the earliest clinical drug trial specialties established in our hospital; it has undertaken more than 100 domestic and international drug clinical trials, 7 of which were led by the department, and is one of the excellent clinical drug trial respiratory specialties recognized at home and abroad.

Past directors of the department: Zhao Mingwu, Yao Wanzhen, He Bei

Current director of the department: Sun Yongchang

Deputy directors: Shen Ning, Chen Yahong, Zhou Qingtao, Liang Ying

Secretary of the Party branch: Zhou Qingtao