Serial Measurements of Tricuspid Regurgitation Pressure Gradient by Echocardiography Predict Prognosis in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.
Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis is a progressive fibrotic disorder of unknown etiology with no cure.
The prediction of individual patient survival is difficult because of its heterogeneity,
although the overall prognosis is poor with a median survival of 2.4-3.5 years.
Pulmonary Hypertension is an important comorbidity of advanced IPF that has a significant negative impact on survival. Variable prevalence of PH has been reported.
Combined Pulmonary Fibrosis and Emphysema has been proposed as a new phenotype of pulmonary fibrosis, defined by the presence of emphysema of upper lobe and fibrosis of the lower lobe. PH involvement is more frequent in
IPF with emphysema than in IPF without emphysema, and PH is believed to be a poor prognostic factor of CPFE.
In IPF, there is a possibility that CPFE patients are substantially included among IPF patients with PH. However, it is not clear how many CPFE patients were included in IPF with PH and related with prognosis.
Although, Right Heart Catheterization is the gold standard for PH diagnosis, this procedure is not easy to perform routinely because of its invasiveness. On the other hand, echocardiography is a noninvasive screening modality that can be useful for detecting the cause of suspected or confirmed PH.
Although echocardiography is inferior to RHC in accuracy, several reports have suggested that it can provide a useful prognostic value of IPF. However, most previous studies on the relationship between PH and IPF were cross-sectional analyses.
Pulm Res Respir Med Open J. 2016; 3(1): 2-9. doi: 10.17140/PRRMOJ-3-124