Pulmonologist for HSR Layout, Bengaluru

The respiratory problems that bring HSR residents in

HSR Layout is one of the densest residential and working neighbourhoods in south Bengaluru, and the lung problems that come from it form a fairly consistent pattern. They are rarely dramatic. They are the problems that have been going on for months, have been treated two or three times as something else, and have quietly narrowed what someone is able to do.

Dr. Manjunath M Negigoudara consults at KIMS Hospital, Electronic City, about 20 minutes south down Hosur Road. He is a transplant pulmonologist with MBBS as a Gold Medalist from Bangalore Medical College, MD in Pulmonary Medicine from JSS Medical College, DNB in Respiratory Medicine and a Fellowship in Interventional Pulmonology from Manipal Hospitals. The transplant work is the specialist end of the practice. Most consultations are about the four problems below.

The cough that has outlasted the antibiotics

A cough lasting more than eight weeks is chronic by definition, and by that point it is almost never an infection. The most common single error in managing it is another course of antibiotics, which is why patients frequently arrive having had three or four.

The causes that actually account for most chronic cough:

• Cough-variant asthma, where cough is the only symptom and there is no wheeze at all. Diagnosed with spirometry and a treatment trial, not by listening to the chest.
• Upper airway and allergic rhinitis, producing post-nasal drip and throat clearing, particularly common given Bengaluru's pollen and dust load.
• Acid reflux, which frequently causes cough with no heartburn whatsoever, so patients reject the suggestion until it is treated and the cough stops.
• Medication, specifically ACE inhibitor blood pressure tablets, a well-known cause that is easily missed if the medication list is not reviewed.
• Something that needs finding, which is why a chest X-ray and spirometry come before assuming the cause is benign.

More than one of these is usually present together, which is why single-cause treatment often half works and then stalls.

Asthma that starts in adulthood

Adult-onset asthma is common and is under-recognised because adults with breathlessness get investigated for heart problems, anaemia and anxiety before anyone measures their breathing. It is often triggered by an allergen at home or at work, or begins after a respiratory infection that never fully cleared.

It is also frequently under-treated. Patients are handed a reliever inhaler and told to use it when needed, which controls the symptom and not the underlying inflammation. If you are using a blue inhaler more than twice a week, your asthma is not controlled, regardless of how well you feel between episodes. Inhaler technique is worth checking too, since a significant proportion of people using inhalers are not getting the drug into their lungs at all.

Sleep apnoea in people who do not fit the stereotype

The picture most people have of sleep apnoea is an older, heavier man. That picture causes the condition to be missed in exactly the population HSR Layout is full of. Airway anatomy matters as much as weight, and South Asian populations develop obstructive sleep apnoea at a lower body mass index than Western ones.

Worth an assessment if you recognise several of these:

• Snoring, particularly if a partner has noticed pauses in breathing
• Waking unrefreshed no matter how long you were in bed
• Afternoon sleepiness at a desk, or fighting sleep while driving
• Waking with a dry mouth, a headache, or needing to pass urine repeatedly at night
• Blood pressure that is hard to control despite medication
• Difficulty concentrating that has been attributed to work stress

Diagnosis is a sleep study, either at home or in the laboratory. Treatment where indicated is usually CPAP, and the difference it makes to daytime function is often described by patients as the single biggest change in years. See sleep apnoea assessment and the sleep medicine service.

Breathlessness that has been put down to being unfit

This is the one worth taking seriously. Gradually reducing exercise tolerance in a working-age adult is easily explained away by weight, desk work and age, and sometimes that is genuinely all it is. But the same story is how interstitial lung disease, pulmonary hypertension and early heart failure all begin.

The distinguishing question is whether your oxygen level falls when you move. Resting saturation can read a perfectly normal 97 percent in someone who drops into the eighties after six minutes of walking, and nothing about a resting reading will reveal that. A walk test with continuous oximetry takes minutes and is the test that separates deconditioning from disease. See interstitial lung disease and pulmonary hypertension.

Your home may be part of the problem

The pattern to notice is when symptoms are worse. Worse at home than at the office, worse at night and on waking, better when you travel and returning within a day or two of coming back. Any of these points to an indoor trigger rather than to something inherent, and indoor triggers can be identified and reduced. Mention the pattern at the consultation, because it changes what gets tested. The Sarjapur Road page goes through the specific indoor allergens of apartment living in detail.

Getting to the clinic from HSR Layout

By metro

The Namma Metro Yellow Line opened in August 2025 and runs elevated above Hosur Road, which takes the Silk Board bottleneck out of the journey entirely. Board at Central Silk Board, Hongasandra or Kudlu Gate depending on which sector of HSR you are in, and travel south to Infosys Foundation Konappana Agrahara, the station for the KIMS Electronic City area.

By road

KIMS Hospital, Survey No. 37 and 38, PES University EC Campus, Hosur Road, Konappana Agrahara, Bengaluru 560100. From HSR Layout, join Hosur Road and take the Electronic City elevated expressway south. Usually about 20 minutes outside peak hours. Parking is on site.

Or do not travel at all

Video consultations run between 9 AM and 9 PM, booked and paid in advance, which works for reviewing reports, discussing a diagnosis, adjusting treatment and second opinions. WhatsApp your reports to +91 79937 41199 beforehand either way.

For patients across Bengaluru and beyond

South Bengaluru

The clinic serves Koramangala, Sarjapur Road, BTM Layout, Jayanagar, JP Nagar, Bannerghatta Road, Bommanahalli and the Hosur Road corridor south to Bommasandra and Anekal.

Across India

Patients relocating to Bengaluru for work frequently transfer their respiratory care here, most often from Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Gurugram, Noida, Kolkata and Ahmedabad, and from Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Coimbatore and Visakhapatnam. If you are moving city, bring or request your previous spirometry results rather than starting again, because an asthma history is far more useful than a single new reading.

International patients

Returning non-resident Indians and expatriate residents consult from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Singapore, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia, often scheduling an assessment around a visit home. Video consultations run 9 AM to 9 PM India time, which covers most of those time zones. See second opinion.