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UCI Lung Center
University of California, Irvine |
Septimiu Dan Murgu, MD | Pyng Lee, MD | Carla St. Laurent, MD
Listed annually in Best Doctors in America since 1996, and recently in Orange Coast Magazine's Best Doctors, Dr. Colt has authored over 90 peer-reviewed original research articles in addition to numerous book chapters, textbooks, and review papers. He has served as an associate editor for the Journal of Bronchology, is section editor for the popular UpToDate in Pulmonary Medicine, and is on the editorial board or reviewer's list for numerous medical journals. Dr. Colt has served as President of the American Association for Bronchology and is a regent of the World Bronchology Association. He has also served on the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Lung Cancer Support and Education (ALCASE), and has the honor of serving as an official development consultant to the Tianjin Economic Development Area (TEDA) in Tianjin, China. Dr. Colt is an internationally recognized authority and leader in advanced pulmonary endoscopic procedures. He lectures internationally and in the United States on bronchoscopic laser resection and stenting, novel endoscopic technologies and teaching modalities, thoracoscopy and pleural diseases, as well as on palliative cancer treatments. Although Dr. Colt's major area of interest is in the education, diagnosis, and treatment of patients with advanced lung disorders, he is increasingly asked to speak about issues pertaining to spirituality, religious and cultural diversity, ethics, humanitarian aid, palliative care, and end-of-life care. A strong advocate for the democratization of knowledge, Dr. Colt's focus is increasingly on the design, implementation and dissemination of novel technologies and innovative, effective learning modalities which encompass verbal, written, video, multimedia, and virtual reality curricula. These include the recently released Essential Bronchoscopist©, a web-based tool for laddered self-learning of bronchoscopy-related theory, and the creation of Bronchoscopy International (bronchoscopy.org), an open-access forum that relies on the generosity and knowledge of a group of friends and colleagues to facilate training for students and bronchoscopists of all nations.
After coauthoring the first report on meat wrapper's asthma in 1973, he remained active in the field of asthma treatment, organizing same day asthma education and treatment clinics at Permanente. He lectured widely on asthma care until the late 1980s, when his interest in pleural disease, thoracoscopy, and pleurodesis became his passion. He has served on the faculty in many thoracoscopy courses in Long Beach, Marseille, and Alexandroupolis, Greece. He has published original studies on mesothelioma, pleural pH, talc pleurodesis, thoracentesis, asthma care and is a reviewer for several medical journals, including Chest, Respiration, and The Lancet. He lectured in 1991 in central America and since 1996 he has participated in 7 French and American medical missions to Viet Nam, where he recently trained the Hanoi pulmonary team in doing thoracoscopy under local anesthesia. In 2006, he received a Chest Foundation Humanitarian Award for his work in Viet Nam. Dr. Aelony is past president of the medical staff in Harbor City and the Los Angeles County Trudeau Society, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Breathe Los Angeles.
Dr. Davoudi has multiple interests both within and outside of medicine. In addition to his expertise in outcomes research and study design, he has grasped many complex concepts pertaining to general medical education, and the use of simulation technology in particular. He has espoused the paradigm in which patients need no longer bear the burden of procedure-related training, and continues to devote research energies and his writing abilities to promoting this learning model. As an interventional pulmonologist, he has expertise in rigid bronchoscopy, laser resection and stent insertion, thoracoscopy and pleuroscopy, and percutaneous tracheotomy in addition to numerous other techniques. Other interests include: (1) Computer technology and applications in medicine; (2) Education and competency-based assessment– measurement of educational efficacy – test design and validation; (3) Curriculum design for bronchoscopy and interventional pulmonary procedures; (4) Simulation technology and the use of simulation in bronchoscopy and interventional pulmonary procedures; (5) Outcomes of interventional pulmonary procedures in the elderly population; and (6) database design for use in interventional procedures but also in lung cancer staging and outcomes-oriented staging. Dr. Davoudi is a member of numerous professional organizations, including the American Thoracic Society, the American College of Chest Physicians, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the World Association for Bronchology, and the American Association for Bronchology. Dr. Davoudi has been an active health care provider in the area of international humanitarian assistance, having contributed in multiple medical missions during peacetime and periods of conflict, such as in Rwanda. On a personal note, Dr. Davoudi is fluent in several languages, is an accomplished alpine climber, motorcylist and is an avid reader of history, philosophy, sociology and political sciences.
Dr. Murgu's background is in physics and engineering. Not surprisingly, he has had a keen interest in airflow dynamics and several novel bronchoscopic and radiologic imaging techniques. His major area of clinical interest is in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with various forms of central airway obstruction, including malacia and excessive dynamic airway collapse. A primary focus of his research has been on defining the etiologic, morphologic, and pathophysiologic characteristics of various forms of expiratory central airway collapse and fixed airway strictures. In this regard, he has advocated the use of a novel multidimensional classification system for dynamic central airway obstruction, and is currently working on assessing the role of endobronchial ultrasound and various techniques of morphometric bronchoscopy in order to objectively evaluate airway wall structure and relevance of choke point physiology in these disease processes. Dr. Murgu’s interest in Interventional Pulmonology and airway imaging has also prompted him to help develop and coauthor several research proposals pertaining to the performance of in-vivo high-resolution Optical Coherence Tomography airway imaging in cancer patients. This work is focused on improving the understanding of underlying technologies, related clinical issues, and diverse methods used to assess ways to integrate advanced optical technologies in order to improve the diagnosis and treatment of airway cancer patients. Dr. Murgu is a well liked and dedicated teacher. He lectures regionally on topics such as COPD, asthma, and their imitators including tracheal stenosis and tracheobronchomalacia. He is proficient in flex-rigid pleuroscopy and thoracoscopy, as well as in minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic bronchoscopic procedures. He has authored several peer-reviewed original research papers and review articles in addition to several abstracts and case reports presented at local, national and international meetings. He is a member of the American College of Chest Physicians, the American Association for Bronchology, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, and the American College of Physicians. He is a faculty member of Bronchoscopy International and frequent contributor to the web-based bronchoscopy education site, Bronchoscopy.org, an open-access international forum devoted to training bronchoscopists of all nations.
Dr. Lee is the first author of several publications in peer-reviewed journals and has recently co-written a manual on pleural disease and pleuroscopy using the novel flex-rigid instrument. She also received the Young Investigator's award in 2000 for work in asthma to identify patients at risk for near-fatal events, and has several ongoing research grants. She has recently been awarded a 3-year grant by the National Medical Research Council to pursue her PhD in lung cancer.
Dr. St. Laurent is a member of numerous medical societies, and has received several awards including a Bud Whipple Scholarship, and was named a Regents Scholar and Alumni Scholar by the University of California, Berkeley. She is very interested in teaching, and serves on numerous committees pertaining to subspecialty training and certification. |
Dr. Colt was recruited to the University of California, Irvine in 2002 from the University of California San Diego where he was Professor of Medicine and Director of interventional pulmonary services at UCSD-La Jolla. Previously, Dr. Colt had worked at the Laser Center of the University of Marseille, France. Dr. Colt was educated in the United States (University of Pittsburgh Affiliated Hospitals, Oregon Health Sciences University), and Europe (University of Nice, France). His background is multicultural, he speaks several languages, and has practiced medicine in Europe, the United States, and Africa.
Yossef Aelony studied at the University of Minnesota, where he graduated first in his major field of undergraduate study, was awarded Phi Beta Kappa, did research in neurophysiology, and completed medical school. Postgraduate training in respiratory diseases was done at the UCLA Affiliated Hospitals, and abroad at the Laennec Hospital in Paris, France, and the Brompton Hospital in London. Since studying medical thoracoscopy in Europe, he reintroduced the procedure to Southern California, lecturing widely on the subject beginning in the early 1980s. While working as a pulmonologist/intensivist as a partner with the Harbor City center of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group for over 30 years, he has been an active member of the clinical faculty at Harbor UCLA, where he is clinical professor.
Dr. Mohsen Davoudi went to medical school with a background in pure math and physics. Upon obtaining his medical doctorate from Tehran University, he continued his training in surgery and pediatric surgery at Tehran University, and at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He developed an interest in evidence based medicine and outcomes research, and followed this interest by pursuing training at the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (Oxford, UK), Harvard Medical School, and the Yale University Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), affiliated with the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. After completing a residency in Internal Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, he pursued subspecialty training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). During this time, he also completed a research fellowship and obtained a Master in Advanced Studies (MAS) in clinical research and study design from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Dr. Davoudi joined the faculty at UCI as health sciences clinical instructor and is currently completing a one year Interventional Pulmonary fellowship.
Dr. Septimiu (aka Tim) Murgu was educated in Romania where he obtained his medical doctorate from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Carol Davila”, in Bucharest. He continued his training in the United States, completing Internal Medicine residency at the University of Illinois Affiliated Hospitals -Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston in 2003. He then joined the University of California, Irvine in July 2003 when he began three years training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. Since completing a one year interventional pulmonary fellowship under the mentorship of Prof. Henri Colt in 2006, Dr. Murgu joined the faculty at University of California, Irvine, where he is an assistant professor of medicine.
Dr. Pyng Lee is a Consultant Pulmonologist in the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine of Singapore General Hospital. She is competent in all aspects of pulmonary and critical care medicine, interventional bronchoscopy and pleuroscopy. Her training includes 1 year at the Cleveland Clinic (USA) where she worked under the tutelage of Dr Atul Mehta with focus on interventional pulmonology, lung tranplantation, advanced lung disease and pulmonary hypertension. This was followed by training at the University of California Irvine (USA), Universitat Llobret ( Barcelona, Spain ), Hiroshima City Hospital ( Japan ), Thoraxklinik ( Germany ) and Vjre University Medical Center ( Amsterdam, the Netherlands ) in medical thoracoscopy, rigid bronchoscopy, endobronchial ultrasonography, autofluorescence bronchoscopy as well as early lung cancer research.
Dr. St. Laurent received her medical degree from the University of California San Diego,
in 1996. Following an internship in general surgery, she chose to enter the field of anesthesiology and trained at the University of California, Irvine until 2001. She then specialized in Cardiothoracic anesthesia, pediatric and adult at the University of California San Diego, before joining the Anesthesiology Department at UCI in 2002.
UCI Lung Center
UCI Medical Center, Building 53, Rt 81
101 The City Drive South
Orange, CA 92868
Info & Appointments: 714.456.7002
Fax: 714.456.8349
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