Patients with Serious Illnesses Cheered by Pulmonary Specialist
By MARIA JONES
Assistant Editor
SPRINGER EXPERIENCE: Dr. Andrew Goldberg, a pulmonary specialist, uses Batman memoribilia to give patients cheerful and fun things to look at while they wait in the examination room. Beanie Babies surround the walls in the other room.
MARIA JONES for GTR Newspapers
Waiting for Dr. Andrew Goldberg of the Springer Clinic is an uplifting experience. An avid Batman fan, Dr. Goldberg displays his collection of Batman memorabilia in one of his patient exam rooms. Another room is filled with his nurse’s Beanie Baby collection.
“Many patients referred to me have serious problems and many are depressed,” says Dr. Goldberg, “My philosophy is to give them something fun to look at to help cheer them up.”
Dr. Goldberg, a pulmonary specialist, sees patients with a variety of breathing problems including shortness of breath, wheezing, chronic cough, and congestion.
“The most common problem we see is shortness of breath,” says Dr. Goldberg. “People often have breathing problems with exertion or normal activities. The most severe cases are people who are even short of breath at rest. We also commonly see people who have a chronic cough, a cough that just does not go away. Other complaints we deal with are wheezing, chest congestion and chest pain.”
Dr. Goldberg treats lung problems such as asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, emphysema, fluid in the lung, lung cancer and other respiratory infections. There are less common infections such as tuberculosis and fungal infections that are also treated.
“Many people who have a respiratory infection or even some types of pneumonia do not even go to the doctor because their immune system allows them to recover without medical therapy,” says Dr. Goldberg.
Although Dr. Goldberg is able to treat the patients he sees, he says few are simple.
“All the people we see are referred by another physician who has already evaluated the patient,” says Dr. Goldberg. “Thus the patient usually has a serious problem or one that is difficult to treat.”
Tests are an important part of determining the seriousness of the illness and to determine the appropriate treatment. Most of his patients need a chest X-ray or CT scan, but the most important tests performed, according to Dr. Goldberg, are pulmonary function tests.
“There are two different kinds of breathing tests that we do,” says Dr. Goldberg. “The simple test is called spirometry. For this test, the patient takes in a deep breath and then blows it out as hard and as fast as he/she can into a tube that is connected to a machine/computer. It’s relatively quick, it only takes four or five minutes to perform and it tells us quite a bit about a person’s lung function.
“The more sophisticated test that I do is called the diagnostic pulmonary function study. This involves a lot more sophisticated equipment where we measure a number of parameters that tell us quite a bit about functions of the lung. This test takes about 30 minutes to perform. Most if not all of the patients we see will have one of those two tests.”
Dr. Goldberg says the tests are important because many people are not aware of what their lung function is. A person can loose a lot of lung function and not be aware of it, especially if they are inactive. “That’s why a person can smoke for decades and develop severe emphysema and loose a lot of lung function and not be aware of it,” Dr. Goldberg says.
According to Dr. Goldberg a person who thinks they have good lung function could have as little as 30 to 40 percent, especially if they are sedentary. He tries to encourage primary care physicians to screen people who are at risk with the spirometry test. This would include people who smoke or people who have a family history of lung problems such as asthma.
Dr. Goldberg sees patients with lung cancer and many of them have advanced disease.
“Lung cancer is tricky because a lot of the time a person will have no symptoms,” says Dr. Goldberg. “That is why lung cancer is so bad. A person can have lung cancer for many months and not even be aware of it. You cannot feel things in your lungs, so when people have something growing in the lung, they are not aware of it until it gets very large. A lot of times lung cancer gets picked up on a routine X-ray or when an X-ray or CT scan is done for some other reason.”
Lung cancer is not a good disease to have according to Dr. Goldberg. But if caught in the early stages, cutting it out can cure it. The problem is that most lung cancers are not caught in the earliest stages. When this is the case, radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy is used. Some patients respond to therapy but these treatments are limited in terms of how long they can be given.
Dr. Goldberg says smoking causes most lung cancers although there are other factors that are associated with lung cancer such as genetics and environmental factors such as asbestos. He says there would be much less lung cancer if people stopped smoking.
Dr. Goldburg can be reached at the Springer Clinic at 918-492-7200.
Updated 01-18-2005
Back to Top
