Multidisciplinary team obviates biopsy in most patients with diffuse parenchymal lung diseases—A retrospective study from India

Abstract

The inflammation and fibrosis in diffuse parenchymal lung diseases (DPLDs) in varied proportions give rise to different patterns in radiology and histopathology. The radiological pattern on CT of the thorax most often allows us to make a diagnosis with varying levels of confidence, to optimize management. With a multidisciplinary team bringing the strengths of their individual domains of knowledge, clinical, radiological, histopathological, and in many cases rheumatological, the level of confidence in making this diagnosis increases, often to the stage where the diagnosis is most often right, is concordant with the diagnosis achieved at histopathology and therefore obviates the need for lung biopsy which carries its own costs and risks of complications. Our study emphasizes the role of the multidisciplinary team (MDT) in the management of DPLDs at a tertiary care referral center. Every case of DPLD presenting to our pulmonology department was discussed in an MDT meeting before subjecting them to any diagnostic intervention or therapy. A clinico-radiological diagnosis was made according to the 2002 ATS/ERS guidelines initially. Later an official ATS/ERS/JRS/ALAT statement on idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and a 2013 ATS/ERS consensus for the classification and diagnosis of idiopathic interstitial pneumonia was used. The concordance in our study was defined as the percentage of histopathological diagnoses that were identical to the clinico-radiological MDT diagnosis prior to the biopsy. A total of 434 patients with DPLDs were evaluated. The MDT suggested biopsy for only 38.7% (168/434) patients since the pattern was very clear in 266 (61.3%) cases. As not all patients consented to undergo the biopsy procedure when recommended, histopathology was obtained in 102 patients. The histological diagnosis was concordant with the initial MDT diagnosis in 80.3% (82/102) of samples. On an individual basis, connective tissue disease-interstitial lung disease and sarcoidosis showed the best concordance (87%). In idiopathic non-specific interstitial pneumonitis (NSIP) cases, the histopathological diagnosis concurred in only 53.3% (8/15), out of which 8 were NSIP, 4 were usual interstitial pneumonia, and 3 were reported as inadequate sampling on histopathology. The MDT plays a crucial role in the diagnosis of DPLDs. Not every pattern requires biopsy confirmation. However, an idiopathic non-specific interstitial pneumonitis diagnosis by the MDT should probably be better confirmed by biopsy.