I'm Aware That I'm Rare: Sandeep Sahay MD - CHEST Foundation

Sandeep Sahay is an Assistant Professor and pulmonary hypertension specialist from Houston Methodist Hospital. Dr. Sahay is a CHEST Foundation PAH clinical research grant recipient and he has been highly active in creating patient education materials for PAH and CTEPH patients and medical professionals. In this episode, Dr. Sahay discusses CHEST and the CHEST Foundation.

Transcript:

Hello, I’m Sandeep Sahay, and I’m a pulmonary hypertension specialist at the Houston Methodist Hospital. I work at one of the pulmonary hypertension comprehensive care centers at Houston Methodist. Basically, we treat patients with all types of pulmonary hypertension.

Today, I would like to talk to you about CHEST and the CHEST Foundation.

CHEST and CHEST Foundation, both of them are really amazing organizations and I really love participating and doing things for CHEST. So how it started was actually, it was just self-motivated, I was a regular, any other clinical fellow few years ago, but since my second year of residency, I decided I wanted to just do PAH, my focus was PAH. I just kept on working, like publishing papers, review articles, whatever I could do. As a fellow, I just kept on doing. Then last year I got this CHEST grant award.

It’s a great group I’m in. At least Pulmonary Vascular Diseases Steering Committee was a great opportunity. It’s a great thing for all young clinicians. There are a lot of learning opportunities from all these people. Victor Test, who’s been a great guide and help and a really nice person. Steve Mathai, Wassim H. Fares. In our steering committee, everyone is so helpful and I know all these people because of the CHEST Steering Committee.

CHEST is doing a great work to get the young clinicians involved and young researchers involved. I had research concept, but to get that concept on paper and make people aware, you need funding. CHEST provided that funding for me, so that’s another big help from the CHEST Foundation. This has been a pretty good experience with CHEST.

Then other opportunities like writing patient education material for CHEST Foundation. Education material is mainly targeted for the patient’s education guides. Basically, the whole purpose of the guide is to tell patients how to identify their first symptoms. If you’re having this, what to expect. So, first what your clinical symptoms are, if this is bothering you then this is probably what’s going on. Go and see your doctor and if your doctor tells you that this needs to be done, your doctor tells you that needs to be done, then what that means, because sometimes doctors are talking in a limit of 30 minutes or one hour period of time and sometimes a lot of information given. What I would urge from most of the physicians is just to print out or keep these in your clinic and along with what you’re telling patients, just hand it over to them so that they can read at their own time that what does this new diagnosis entail. What that means. What needs to be done. Good or bad. Those kind of things.

That information is very important for patients to understand that what they’re dealing with, what they should expect, what is going to happen in their future, knowing basically in and out about their disease. The medications they are going to be on. If there is any cure for their disease. If there is no cure. If it’s not a cure, then basically what to expect from their disease. If they’re on a treatment, then can they take over the counter XYZ medication? Can they take over the counter some other medication what it’s contraindicated? Can they fly? They cannot fly. Can they go and move to Colorado and live over there? What should they be doing? Is driving long distances safe for them? What kind of blood thinner I should be taking. All that information’s provided in that and I think that’s very helpful for patients to know about their disease and what to expect. That’s the whole idea about it.

My name is Sandeep Sahay and I am aware that I am rare.

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