Patients with an acute exacerbation of interstitial lung disease (ILD) fare as well with a lung transplant as those who have stable disease, US researchers say.

Their findings suggest that clinicians should consider lung transplant as a potential life-saving procedure for patients with an exacerbation, they write in Thorax.

Respiratory physicians and lung transplant surgeons from a US hospital retrospectively compared transplant outcomes in 25 patients admitted for acute ILD exacerbations and then given a lung transplant with those for 69 patients with stable ILD admitted for transplantation.

Comparisons were also made with 28 other patients admitted to the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital between 2015 and 2018 for acute ILD exacerbation, who did not have a lung transplant either because they were not deemed suitable, or because they declined the procedure.