The characterisation of interstitial lung disease multidisciplinary team meetings: a global study
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Multidisciplinary team (MDT) diagnosis of interstitial lung disease (ILD) has been proposed as a gold standard, but there are no formal recommendations for MDT process or composition and limited knowledge regarding prevalence in routine practice. We performed a systematic evaluation of ILD diagnostic practice across a range of healthcare settings around the world. Electronic questionnaires were distributed across all global regions via society and collaborators networks. Responses from 457 unique centres across 64 countries were included in the analysis. Of the 350 (76.6%) centres holding formal meetings, the majority held face-to-face MDT meetings (80%), for a minimum of 30 min (93%), and discussed diagnosis (96.9%) and patient management (94.9%) at the meetings. Compared with non-academic and academic non-ILD centres, ILD academic centres reported a higher ILD caseload, held more formal MDT meetings, and were more likely to include histopathology and rheumatology specialists in their diagnostic team. Of the centres holding MDT meetings, 5.5% routinely discussed all new cases at such meetings. An MDT approach to ILD diagnosis is consistently interpreted and widely implemented across a range of routine care settings around the world. This observation will inform future ILD diagnostic agreement studies and diagnostic pathway recommendations.
Date Issued
2019-04-01
Date Acceptance
2019-02-05
Citation
ERJ Open Research, 2019, 5 (2)
ISSN
2312-0541
Publisher
European Respiratory Society
Journal / Book Title
ERJ Open Research
Volume
5
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
©ERS 2019 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence 4.0.
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30949489
PII: 00209-2018
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Date Publish Online
2019-04-01