New Clinical Practice Guidelines on Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis and Progressive Pulmonary Fibrosis released

In making a diagnosis, a multidisciplinary team of clinicians-typically chest physicians, radiologists and pathologists with expertise in interstitial lung disease-look for usual interstitial pneumonia or UIP, a hallmark feature of IPF.

"In the absence of a high-resolution computed tomography image pattern of definitive usual interstitial pneumonia subjecting patients to a surgical lung biopsy (SLB) to determine the histopathology features of UIP had been considered as an acceptable surgical procedure in patients who are not at risk for surgical complications to diagnose IPF," said Dr. Raghu.

Increasingly, the trend is to diagnose IPF-using clinical, bronchoalveolar cellular and radiological features; and in patients that need histopathology diagnosis, using smaller lung biopsies with less invasive procedures other than SLB. This trend prompted the guidelines committee to refine the patterns of UIP, provide the current evidence-based guidance for ascertaining the diagnosis of UIP in smaller transbronchial lung biopsies obtained without SLB.

Using the thorough, evidence-based Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation or GRADE framework, the expert panel made the following recommendations:

For further information, check out the following link:

https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.202202-0399ST