What is a breathlessness clinic? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Being short of breath is a terrible feeling, most people agree, and it’s a feature of many lung diseases, especially as they progress. Lung expert Anna Gersten at Johns Hopkins describes how a breathlessness clinic came to be at Hopkins to help people cope with these debilitating conditions.

Gersten: We developed this clinic to start the conversations about general goals of care preferences at end of life, far upstream, to have decision makers ironed out and ideally to make sure that people get a little bit of extra support from the get go in a patient population that doesn't always have symptoms acknowledged or assessed for regularly.   :30

Gersten says the clinic takes a holistic, palliative approach to helping people with severe lung disease live their best lives, including using medicines, teaching techniques to maximize breathing ability, and other strategies where appropriate. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.