What is a "bronchoscopy"?

What is a "bronchoscopy"?

A bronchoscopy is a procedure performed by a pulmonologist where they use a bronchoscope. It has fibre optic bundles in it. It also has a channel down through the middle of it. We put it commonly through the nose, down the trachea, out to the far reaches of the lung, and we look around. If we see anything abnormal, we can take biopsies through that channel. The patient has to understand that we will give them a treatment before we do this procedure using the same medicine that the dentist uses to numb their teeth, only we use a machine that makes a fog out of the Xylocaine, and then they breathe that for about 20 minutes. It numbs everything from the tip of their tongue down to the bottom of their lung, and then we give them 2 medicines in their vein; usually Fentanyl and Versed, and that puts them out in the ozone for about maybe 10, 15, 20 minutes, and allows us to look out in the lung. The patient happily doesn't even remember that we did this, and they're quite comfortable while we do it. They can go home about an hour later. We do probably 4 or 5 of those a week as an outpatient. It's a very common procedure done by a pulmonologist, and quite safely done as an outpatient.