Sritika Thapa, MD

Sritika Thapa, MD, is a pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine specialist. She cares for patients in the intensive care unit and has a particular interest in the use of mechanical ventilators—devices that help people breathe when they are unable to do so on their own. She also treats sleep-related problems such as obstructive sleep apnea, and manages a specialized pulmonary clinic for patients with overlapping sleep and lung-related issues.

“I don’t know where my desire to become a doctor came from exactly—maybe it stemmed from my wanting to reduce the suffering I saw around me as I was growing up,” says Dr. Thapa, who grew up in Nepal, where limited resources made the pursuit of medicine challenging. “I knew as early as fifth grade that medicine was the only thing I wanted to do.”

Later, she worked in a hospital that saw many patients who had been bitten by Kraits, a species of snake whose venom can lead to respiratory paralysis. “This led me to think deeply about ventilators, lung physiology, breathing, and the basic principles around those things,” she says. “It was the right choice.”

Dr. Thapa says she works in partnership with her patients to manage their condition with the goal of not “leaving any stones unturned” in their care. “I want to make sure important problems are not missed and minor ones aren’t ignored,” she says. “I also avoid sugarcoating the reality of a patient’s condition, and stay honest about what we know and don’t know, and about the risks and benefits of different treatment options.”

An assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Thapa has research interests in patients with overlapping sleep-related breathing disorders and obstructive lung disease. “One of the treatments that we recommend is noninvasive ventilation that includes continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) machines, and home mechanical ventilator (HMV). “I am trying to better understand the health outcomes when noninvasive devices are used by patients with chronic respiratory failure from obstructive lung disease,” she says.