Sunday, January 19, 2014

Acute exacerbation of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (AE-IPF)

According to a recent review AE-IPF is characterized by:

..worsening dyspnea with new ground glass opacities superimposed upon a radiographic usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP) pattern. It is a diagnosis of exclusion.

AE-IPF is an emerging clinical entity. Traditional thinking has been that IPF progresses as a continuum but it is increasingly recognized that it often does so in stepwise fashion with acute on chronic episodes.

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