ABSTRACT
Over the past 15 years there has been a palpable shift in the use of various agents
in the treatment of diffuse interstitial lung diseases (ILDs). The original treat-
ments focused on corticosteroids (CSs). This was because of the remarkable
improvement seen in specific ILDs, such as sarcoidosis (1). For the idiopathic
ILDs, a landmark paper by Carrington and colleagues suggested that an open
lung biopsy could predict CS responsiveness [for the desquamative interstitial
pneumonitis (DIP) pattern] versus poor CS response [for the usual interstitial
pneumonitis (UIP) pattern] (2).