Follow-up studies are needed to investigate whether more patients with detectable HRCT abnormalities and pulmonary function test impairments will develop clinically manifest pulmonary disease in the future, they stressed.
The findings are limited by the study's retrospective assessment of early disease variables and by the lack of longitudinal data on the outcome measures, according to the authors. Because symptomatic ILD can develop in the chronic phases of the disease, they wrote, “some of our latest diagnosed patients may still develop ILD.” The study is also limited by the retrospective assessment of early disease variables.