Respiratory and Lung Care with Sanitas
If someone has told you that you stop breathing in your sleep, take it seriously. It is the most under-diagnosed thing this specialty treats, and it quietly raises your blood pressure and strains your heart while you think you are just a bad sleeper.
What a lung specialist treats
Asthma that is not controlled on the usual inhalers. COPD, the long-term lung damage that follows years of smoking. A cough that has lasted more than three weeks. Breathlessness on exertion. Repeated chest infections. Sleep apnoea. And investigating anything abnormal that has turned up on a chest X-ray.
Sleep apnoea, the one people miss
Worth singling out because it is common, badly under-diagnosed, and quietly serious.
The signs are loud snoring, stopping breathing during sleep, usually noticed by a partner rather than the person, waking unrefreshed however long you slept, and falling asleep during the day. Untreated it raises blood pressure and strains the heart.
Diagnosis is a sleep study, sometimes done at home with equipment you take away. Treatment is usually a CPAP machine, which keeps the airway open overnight.
The consultation and the sleep study are covered. CPAP treatment is covered on most plans when a Sanitas specialist prescribes it and Sanitas authorises it, but auto-CPAP machines are excluded and Top Quantum does not cover sleep apnoea treatment at all. Ask us to check your plan before you accept a machine.
Asthma and the Spanish climate
People find their asthma changes when they move here. Often it improves in a drier climate. Sometimes it gets worse, because of new pollens or because coastal humidity encourages dust mites. Either way it is worth having reviewed rather than carrying on with inhalers prescribed for a different country's air.
Smoking and lung damage
If you smoked for years and stopped, a baseline lung function test is a sensible thing to have. It takes about twenty minutes and is nothing more than breathing hard into a tube. It gives you a number to compare against later, and it catches COPD at the stage where slowing it down still achieves something.
Waiting periods
None on consultations or lung function tests. Complex diagnostic tests, including CT scans of the chest, carry 6 months. Anything urgent is covered immediately.
See every Sanitas waiting period in one place, including how switching from another insurer waives nearly all of them.
Where the lung specialists are
378 clinics across 45 provinces, with 506 named specialists between them – and you can book any of them yourself, without a referral.
- Barcelona – 71 clinics, 88 specialists
- Madrid – 55 clinics, 130 specialists
- Malaga – 29 clinics, 19 specialists
- Cadiz – 23 clinics, 16 specialists
- Balearics – 20 clinics, 21 specialists
- Valencia – 19 clinics, 21 specialists
- Vizcaya – 12 clinics, 16 specialists
Five provinces have none in the network, so check what is within reach.
Ask us and we will check who is near you and what languages they work in.
What you pay
Nothing at the clinic on a no-co-payment plan. A small fixed amount per visit on a co-payment plan, with tests charged separately.
Find a lung specialist near you
Browse pulmonologists in the Sanitas directory – by province, with addresses, phone numbers and a map.
