Temple University (TU Consortium)

Temple Lung Center is one of the nation's largest referral centers for lung disease. We have over 26,000 annual outpatient visits for pulmonary diseases and over 28,000 annual hospitalizations for pulmonary and critical care medicine disorders.

The Temple Lung Center outpatient clinic is a 14,000 square-foot facility integrating state of the art pulmonary function, exercise, and physiologic testing with physician visits. The Temple Lung Center pulmonary function laboratory is a 4,000 square-foot area with five rooms dedicated to pulmonary function testing, two to cardiopulmonary exercise testing, and four to miscellaneous testing and consultation. The laboratory is capable of measuring spirometry, lung volumes, diffusing capacity, airways resistance, maximum inspiratory and expiratory mouth pressures, mouth occlusion pressure, bronchoprovocation, control of breathing in response to hypercapnic challenge, lung and chest wall recoil, six minute walk test, and cardiopulmonary exercise studies on room air or oxygen (to Fi02 0.5). There are five whole body pulmonary plethysmographs for measuring functional residual capacity, total lung capacity, airway resistance and other key parameters of lung disease.

Temple's inpatient facility consists of state of the art pulmonary critical care services: 28-bed Respiratory Care ICU, 50- bed High-Dependency Respiratory Care Unit with dedicated Ventilator Rehabilitation Unit and a specialized physical therapy center.

Temple Lung Center staff consists of over 200 specialists, including: pulmonary and critical care physicians, cardiothoracic surgeons, pulmonary nurse specialists, transplantation specialists, respiratory therapists, fellows in training, respiratory nurse practitioners, physical therapists, nurses, dedicated lung research managers, counselors and social workers, research nurse coordinators, nurses' aides, nutritionists, and regulatory and grant coordinators.

Temple has one of the most active adult pulmonary research programs in the country. We are currently involved in 55 open clinical trials with an additional 20+ clinical trials in development. We have always demonstrated a reliable record of patient recruitment; uniformly high enrollment rates and substantial racial/ethnic diversity; the ability to enroll both outpatients and inpatients; healthy individuals as well as those with pulmonary diseases; and subjects residing in remote (>100 miles away) or rural locations as well as those living in close proximity to our urban and suburban clinics.