Faculty Profile

Alejandra Lastra
Section of Pulmonary / Critical Care
Associate Professor of Medicine
Alejandra.Lastra@bsd.uchicago.edu
Referring Physician Access Line: 1-877-DOM-2730
Director, Sleep Medicine Fellowship Program

Academic Interests

Dr. Lastra is a physician-educator and Director of the Sleep Medicine Fellowship Program. She is Vice-Chair of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Education Committee and President of the Illinois Sleep Society, leading platforms for education across academic institutions in Chicago and the nation. Dr. Lastra is dedicated to the education of medical students, residents and fellows and her current projects include curriculum development for teaching sleep medicine from medical school to pulmonary and critical care fellowship. She specializes in the management of chronic respiratory failure in patients with neuromuscular disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, obesity hypoventilation syndrome and COPD. Her research interest focuses on improving diagnosis and outcomes in patients with complex sleep disordered breathing and associated comorbidities, advancing inpatient sleep medicine and women’s sleep health. She is expanding access to portable monitoring testing and assessing the impact of early diagnosis and treatment of complex sleep disorders.
 

Clinical Interests

Non-invasive and invasive ventilation, respiratory failure, inpatient sleep medicine, hypoglossal nerve stimulation, COPD-OSA overlap, obesity hypoventilation syndrome, women’s sleep health.
 

Publications

  • Khachatryan SG, Lastra AC, Vardanyan LV, Khachatryan LG, Attarian HP. Kleine-Levin syndrome related to pregnancy: a case report. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 2021 Jun 23:jcsm-9482.
  • Htun ZM, McCullough L, Lastra AC. Ineffective CPAP Treatment After Effective CPAP Titration. Chest. 2020 Dec;158(6):e311-e315. doi: 10.1016/j.chest.2020.07.030. PMID: 33280775.
  • Mahdavinia M, Kapil A, Bernstein JS, Lastra AC, LoSavio PS. Race as a risk factor for sleep timing shift and disruption in chronic rhinosinusitis. Ann Allergy Asthma Immunol. 2020 Oct 31:S1081-1206(20)31161-3. doi: 10.1016/j.anai.2020.10.019. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33144267.
  • Lastra AC, Masa JF, Mokhlesi B. CPAP titration failure is not equivalent to long-term CPAP treatment failure in patients with obesity hypoventilation syndrome: a case series, J Clin Sleep Med. 2020 Nov 15;16(11):1975-1981. doi: 10.5664/jcsm.8712. PMID: 32713421.
  • Lastra AC, Attarian HP. The Persistent Gender Bias in the Diagnosis of Obstructive Sleep Apnea: A Commentary. Gender and the Genome, April 2018:43-48. doi:10.1177/2470289718787107.
For a complete list of publications click here:

Training

  • MD, 2005, Jose Maria Vargas School of Medicine
  • Residency, 2011, Albert Einstein Medical Center, Internal Medicine
  • Fellowship, 2015, Temple University Hospital, Pulmonary and Critical Care
  • Fellowship, 2016, University of Illinois at Chicago/Rush University Medical Center, Sleep Medicine