Diagnosis, Clinical Features and Management of Interstitial Lung Diseases in Rheumatic Disorders: Still a Long Journey.

In fact, more studies showed that the presence of a UIP pattern did not worsen the prognoses of patients with SSc [[28]], while the survival rates of RA-ILD patients with a UIP pattern seemed to be similar to that of patients with IPF [[6]]. Although clinically evident ILD is usually recorded in 7-10% of RA patients, the prevalence of subclinical ILD was higher when consecutive patients were evaluated using high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT). Recently, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and the American Thoracic Society (ATS) "Task Force on Undifferentiated Forms of Connective Tissue Disease-associated Interstitial Lung Disease" proposed classification criteria for a new research category defined as "Interstitial Pneumonia with Autoimmune Features" (IPAF), including a subgroup of patients with ILD and clinical, radiological and/or serological findings suggestive of but not diagnostic of a definite CTD, but this remains to be better investigated [[4]]. Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is one of the most frequent pulmonary complications of autoimmune rheumatic diseases (ARDs), and it is mainly associated with connective tissue diseases (CTDs) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) [[1]]. [Extracted from the article]