Contemporary Concise Review 2018: interstitial lung disease

The term ‘interstitial lung diseases’ (ILD) refers to heterogeneous disorders with a remarkably different clinical history or prognoses. We use it to clinically define this complex and large group of diseases that share some common characteristics such as the interstitium targeting, the possibility of lung scarring or the radio- logical/histopathological pattern. In contrast with obstructive diseases or lung neoplasms, ILD are quite rare and somewhat challenging due to their unknown cause. However, there is no other field in respiratory medicine that evolved so significantly as ILD during the last 10 years, in particular the idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). The personalized medicine is just starting to be the preferred approach for ILD management, and the scientific research is focusing on early disease bio- markers, genomic characterization, real-life treatment’s data and new potential targets in phase I/II trials. With respect to all of these challenging points, this Concise Review aims at showing the recent 2018 updates in ILD with a special focus on those disorders that can be con- sidered to be ‘hot topics’ in the miscellaneous world of ILD such as IPF, sarcoidosis, connective tissue disease associated with ILD (CTD-ILD) and hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP)