Biography

Professor Pallav Shah is a consultant physician in respiratory medicine at Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals, who treats NHS and private patients.

He studied medicine at Guy’s Hospital Medical School (now part of King’s College London) and qualified in 1989. He completed his specialist training in respiratory medicine at the Royal Brompton Hospital, St Mary’s Hospital (part of Imperial College Healthcare) and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

Professor Shah has worked at Royal Brompton Hospital for more than 20 years.

Dedicated to improving standards of care for patients, Professor Pallav Shah serves on national and global guideline groups. He is a specialist adviser to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

Clinical expertise

Professor Pallav Shah leads the lung cancer and bronchoscopy service for both Royal Brompton Hospital and nearby Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

He is experienced in the diagnosis and treatment of respiratory diseases such as:

Professor Pallav Shah has pioneered a number of novel procedures for treating lung diseases, these include:

He offers new treatments for COPD and chronic bronchitis, to significantly improve associated symptoms such as inflammation and mucus production including:

  • vapour therapy
  • targeted nerve ablation (the Nuvaria procedure)
  • RejuvenAir® procedure, uses liquid nitrogen to freeze the surface cells – the airway epithelium – allowing the epithelium to regenerate to treat cough and chronic bronchitis
  • pulsed electrical field energy treatment (RheoX) procedure to treat chronic bronchitis. 

When it comes to treating lung cancer, Professor Pallav Shah offers a range of procedures including:

  • diathermy (using heat) and cryotherapy (using low temperatures)
  • inserting gold markers to enable treatment with the CyberKnife® – a fully robotic radiation delivery system to treat tumours
  • microwave ablation using the Creo (microflex ablate device) and the Medtronic thermosphere device
  • endobronchial ultrasound for lung cancer diagnosis and staging, which Professor Shah was involved in developing.

He has introduced and is developing robotic-guided procedures with the Ion Platform in conjunction with Cone Beam CT scanning (CBCT) using the Azurion Phillips platform for the biopsy and treatment of small peripheral lung nodules. 

Research interests

Professor Pallav Shah is active in both researching and developing new treatments.

This ranges from valves or umbrella-like devices to achieve bronchoscopic lung volume reduction in patients with heterogenous emphysema, to the role of stents to create collateral airways in homogenous emphysema.

Publications

Professor Pallav Shah has published over 250 papers and several books. He has authored and been a sectional editor for important textbooks such as Gray’s Anatomy and the Oxford Textbook of Medicine.

Teaching

Professor Pallav Shah is a professor at Imperial College London. He teaches both undergraduates at Imperial College and has several postgraduate PhD and MD res fellows. 

Furthermore, he runs an interventional bronchoscopy course aimed at training other specialists in some of the new and evolving bronchoscopic treatments.