PFF Care Center Network Now Includes UT Medicine in San Antonio

The Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation (PFF) Care Center Network recently announced the addition of UT Medicine San Antonio to its group of medical centers specialized in the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis (PF). The designation acknowledges UT Medicine’s comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to providing top-quality care to PF patients and their families.

The PFF network, started in 2013, now consists of 40 centers, across 26 U.S. states, with specific expertise in the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis (PF), a damaging and progressive group of lung conditions marked by extensive scarring.

PF patients who attend UT Medicine benefit from a broad range of services, including general and transplant pulmonologists, thoracic surgeons, pathologists, radiologists and rheumatologists. The center is the academic clinical practice of the School of Medicine at San Antonio’s University of Texas Health Science Center.

The PFF Care Center Network’s mission is to educate the public about PF’s symptoms and raise awareness for the disease among the community and physicians, so that patients can be referred at an early stage to an expert center, such as UT Medicine, said Anoop Nambiar, MD, the PFF Care Center director and assistant professor of medicine at UT, in a press release provided to Pulmonary Fibrosis News.

“Since pulmonary fibrosis is relatively rare compared to asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, there is often considerable uncertainty about establishing a timely and accurate diagnosis and management plan” Dr. Nambiar added.

PF has no cure, but UT Medicine has participated in clinical trials that led to U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of a drug able to slow disease progression in 2014. UT Medicine San Antonio is the third PFF Network center in the Texas, joining UT  Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and the UT Health Science Center at Houston.

As part of the PFF Care Center Network, UT Medicine will be granted access to other resources directed to pulmonary fibrosis patients and caregivers, and may participate in the soon-to-open PFF Patient Registry, a large-scale collection of patient data for research use. UT Medicine will also have the opportunity to collaborate with the other 39 care centers that comprise the PFF Network to advance care for this patient population.

All the selected medical centers were carefully evaluated by a panel of experts with regard to their facilities, staff, training of fellows and residents, level of care, and contributions to research in the PF field.

Those interested in contacting UT Medicine can call 210-450-9000 or visit UT Medicine’s website.