Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a severe,chroniclung disease.
It involves lung inflammation and/or scarring of your lungs' alveoli, or air sacs.
The scarring causes stiffness in your lungs.
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This affects their ability to absorb oxygen from the air, making breathing difficult.
The causes of this illness are not fully known.
As a result, this disease is called idiopathic, meaning it has no known cause.
However, having certain risk factors can make you more likely to get the disease.
Lung damage due to this disease cannot be changed.
The illness becomes worse over time, making it harder to breathe.
Treatment can help improve symptoms and slow the progress of the damage.
This article describes idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis symptoms, causes, diagnosis, treatment, and outlook.
The impact of the disease makes the lung tissue stiff and thick.
While other idiopathic types of interstitial lung disease exist, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is the most common.
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is broken down into stages of illness.
These stages are considered mild, severe, or advanced based on the results ofpulmonary function tests.
Since this disease is rare, it may not be familiar to many healthcare providers.
In addition, many symptoms of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis are also present in other lung diseases.
The diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis typically requires more than one test.
A discussion of your risk factors and other medical conditions is also included.
Pulmonary Function Tests
Pulmonary function tests can help diagnose idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and distinguish it from other lung diseases.
A lung biopsy can be done viafine needle aspirationor as anopen biopsyusing an incision.
Treatment
Treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis can slow disease progression and help your lungs work better.
A lung transplant is most often used to treat patients without significant complications.
Prognosis
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a rare disease that varies significantly from person to person.
This can make a prognosis hard to determine.
Comorbidity can significantly impact the prognosis of your idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Having another disease simultaneously can contribute to delays in diagnosing and treating idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
This can advance the loss of quality of life and worsen outcomes.
Coping
Everyone copes with chronic illness differently.
Many people benefit frompalliative care, also known as supportive care.
This punch in of care focuses on relieving and preventing symptoms that cause discomfort.
Palliative care aims to improve your quality of life with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
The illness can have an extreme medical and psychological impact.
The effect stiffens and thickens lung tissue, making it harder to breathe during movement.
As the condition advances, it can also cause breathing hard during rest and sleep.
With symptoms common to many other types of lung disease, this illness can be hard to diagnose.
It can sometimes take years if the disease moves slowly and its impact gradually.
Treatment can help reduce symptoms, but the damage caused cannot be improved.
The prognosis is usually poor.
In severe cases, lung replacement may be a treatment option after other failed therapies.
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