The following is a summary of “Hospitalisation patterns in interstitial lung diseases: data from the EXCITING-ILD registry,” published in the January 2024 issue of Pulmonology by Buschulte et al.
Interstitial lung diseases (ILD) encompass a diverse range of primarily chronic respiratory conditions, comprising over 200 distinct entities characterized by significant heterogeneity in disease trajectory and prognosis. Despite this complexity, more comprehensive data on hospitalization patterns in ILD must be available. We thoroughly analyzed hospitalization trends by leveraging the EXCITING-ILD (Exploring Clinical and Epidemiological Characteristics of Interstitial Lung Diseases) registry.
This investigation involved categorizing hospitalizations into all-cause, ILD-related, and respiratory-related admissions, focusing on evaluating frequency, time to first non-elective hospitalization, mortality, and progression-free survival among patients. Our findings, drawn from a cohort of 601 patients, revealed 1,210 hospitalizations spanning the 6 months preceding registry inclusion to the latest study visit, with a substantial proportion (66.1%) attributed to ILD-related causes.
Notably, most admissions (59.3%) occurred within the initial year following inclusion. Mortality was significantly associated with all-cause, ILD-related, and respiratory-related hospitalizations. Advanced disease stages, according to the GAP Index and ILD subtypes linked to connective tissue disease (CTD)-ILDs emerged as prominent risk factors for hospitalization. Additionally, pulmonary hypertension was identified as a significant predictor of all-cause hospitalizations. In contrast, ILD-related hospitalizations exhibited associations with unclassifiable ILD, concomitant emphysema, other granulomatous ILDs, and positive smoking status. These insights underscore the critical importance of understanding predisposing factors for hospitalization in ILD and emphasize the substantial impact of hospitalization on mortality. Consequently, further research is imperative to characterize vulnerable patient populations and develop strategies to mitigate hospitalizations.
Source: respiratory-research.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12931-023-02588-y