0:03
Hello, this is Eric Dyne live here with RheumNow at ACR Convergence.
0:09
I'm going to talk about screening for ILD in patients with systemic sclerosis, scleroderma.
0:15
I'm going to talk about abstract 0244, which looked at a prospective study from two New York-based scleroderma centers.
0:25
They looked at 106 patients, all with relatively recent diagnoses within the last 5 years of first Raynaud's symptom onset.
0:34
Screening with a battery of testing for scleroderma including the high-resolution CT scan, pulmonary function test, pulmonary examination with auscultation of the lungs, serum testing including CRP, IL-6, surfactant protein D, and matrix metalloproteinase 7, MMP-7.
0:57
They looked at the patients with clinical ILD, screening-detected ILD versus no ILD — the screening-detected not having any findings on examination, no crackles, no rales, and no clinical symptoms.
1:13
They compared them both at baseline and then at 12 months.
1:17
The study participants: 53 patients were looked at prospectively.
1:21
79% were female. 58% of them had diffuse disease.
1:27
They found 24% had clinically defined ILD, 19% with the screening-detected ILD, and 58% without ILD.
1:36
Of these patients, 61% — or of the 61 patients who did not have any crackles on exam — one third of them was found to have ILD on high-resolution CT scan and on follow-up.
1:54
So 33% without any symptoms may still have ILD.
1:57
Of the patients with screen-detected ILD, they had a higher MMP-7 in the blood work as compared to the no-ILD patients.
2:04
They did report at 12 months some symptoms of dyspnea, but no change in FVC or DLCO as compared to the no-ILD patients.
2:12
So this is a study that demonstrates to me that of the new-onset ILD patients, up to a third of the patients without any pulmonary findings can have ILD on screening, and we should have our suspicion high for that and be following them.
2:27
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