pulmonologist

A pulmonologist is the doctor you see for the lungs and breathing — the specialist who untangles a stubborn cough, a worsening shortness of breath, or an abnormal shadow on a chest scan. Where a general practitioner handles common chest complaints, the pulmonologist is the one called in for the difficult or serious ones.

Training is a long road: a medical degree, then several years of internal-medicine residency, then further fellowship years devoted to respiratory disease. Pulmonologists diagnose and treat conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung infections, lung cancer, interstitial lung disease and sleep-related breathing disorders, and many also care for the critically ill in the intensive-care unit.

Their toolkit includes lung-function tests, chest imaging, and procedures such as bronchoscopy, in which a thin camera is passed into the airways to look, sample and sometimes treat. In many countries the same doctor is called a respirologist or respiratory physician; the title varies, the expertise does not.