Having a robust diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is absolutely critical, drugs do work so use them, and patients require information and opportunity to access the treatment they need and deserve.
These were the key messages of a talk in the interstitial lung disease: from beginning to end session given by Dr Michael Gibbons, a consultant respiratory physician at the Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation NHS trust.
Speaking at the British Thoracic Society 2018 meeting in Manchester on 14 June, he said studies showed there was evidence that drugs used to treat patients with IPF worked but there was a debate around when patients should commence treatment, he told delegates during his talk called The drugs do work: who, when, which and what next.
“I don’t have what I think is the right answer I just have what I think one should do” he said.
“And I think that when the diagnosis is robust, so when you’ve gone through an interstitial lung disease multidisciplinary meeting and you can’t find anything else and you’re sure this is IPF then you should strongly consider starting treatment at that point,” he advised.
Dr Gibbons told delegates that he still sees patients with an FVC of 55% because they’ve been under a ‘watch and wait’ approach, been back out to the community and subsequently deteriorated because they had become lost to follow-up.