The interstitial lung disease patient pathway: from referral to diagnosis

The interstitial lung disease patient pathway: from referral to diagnosis

Background Suspected interstitial lung disease (ILD) patients may be referred to an ILD-specialist centre or a non-ILD-specialist centre for diagnosis and treatment. Early referral and management of patients at ILD-specialist centres has been shown to improve survival and reduce hospitalisations. Th...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Graham Lough, Rayid Abdulqawi, Gina Amanda, Katerina Antoniou, Arata Azuma, Milind Baldi, Ahmed Bayoumy, Jürgen Behr, Elisabeth Bendstrup, Demosthenes Bouros, Kevin Brown, Nazia Chaudhuri, Tamera J. Corte, Vincent Cottin, Bruno Crestani, Kevin R. Flaherty, Ian Glaspole, Leticia Kawano-Dourado, Michael P. Keane, Martin Kolb, Fernando J. Martinez, Maria Molina-Molina, Iñigo Ojanguren, Laurence Pearmain, Ganesh Raghu, Paola Rottoli, Stefan C. Stanel, Gabriela Tabaj, Carlo Vancheri, Brenda Varela, Bonnie Wang, Athol Wells, Pilar Rivera-Ortega
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: European Respiratory Society 2025-03-01
Series:ERJ Open Research
Online Access:http://openres.ersjournals.com/content/11/2/00899-2024.full
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Background Suspected interstitial lung disease (ILD) patients may be referred to an ILD-specialist centre or a non-ILD-specialist centre for diagnosis and treatment. Early referral and management of patients at ILD-specialist centres has been shown to improve survival and reduce hospitalisations. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the ILD patient diagnostic pathway and prompted centres to adapt. This study investigates and contrasts ILD patient pathways in ILD-specialist and non-ILD-specialist centres, focusing on referrals, caseloads, diagnostic tools, multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meeting practices and resource accessibility. Methods Conducted as a cross-sectional study, a global self-selecting survey ran from September 2022 to January 2023. Participants included ILD specialists and healthcare professionals (HCPs) from ILD-specialist centres and non-ILD-specialist centres. Results Of 363 unique respondents from 64 countries, 259 were from ILD-specialist centres and 104 from non-ILD-specialist centres. ILD centres had better resource availability, exhibiting higher utilisation of diagnostic tests (median: 12 tests) than non-ILD centres (nine tests) and better access to specialist professions attending MDT meetings (median: six professions at meeting) in specialist centres than non-ILD centres (three professions at meeting). Transitioning to virtual MDT meetings allowed HCPs from other locations to join meetings in nearly 90% of all centres, increasing regular participation in 60% of specialist centres and 72% of non-ILD centres. For treatment of patients, specialist centres had better access to antifibrotic drugs (91%) compared to non-ILD centres (60%). Conclusions Diagnostic pathways for ILD patients diverged between specialist centres and non-ILD centres. Disparities in resource and specialist availability existed between centres.
ISSN:2312-0541

Similar Items