Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) Management

National Jewish Health discusses both medical and non-medical management options for patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).

Transcript

Treatment options can be broken into: medicinal or medicines, and non-medicinal therapies.

Those medicines are approved for IPF, not other types of pulmonary fibrosis and they have been shown to slow the progression of IPF on average.

Non-medicinal therapies or non-medication therapies are very important as well.

Many, if not most, patients with IPF will end up needing supplemental oxygen at some point in their disease. We believe pulmonary rehabilitation is another critical component of the therapeutic regimen.

These patients are at risk for comorbid conditions.

So it’s important to look for those comorbid conditions and decide whether therapy is needed for those.

Finally, like patients with other chronic respiratory conditions, patients with IPF need to be vaccinated.

So we recommend an annual influenza vaccine and vaccination against pneumococcus and pertussis as well.

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Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) Management

Transcript

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