Quantitative analysis of lung sounds for monitoring idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: a prospective pilot study

Abstract

To the Editor:
Accurate monitoring of disease progression in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is crucial for predicting prognosis and optimising management, including the initiation of therapies, the appropriate timing of supportive care and the prompt referral for lung transplantation. While forced vital capacity (FVC) via spirometry has been accepted as the most feasible and reliable tool to assess the deterioration in these patients in clinical practice as well as in randomised controlled trials [1, 2], in recent years both visual evaluation and computer-based analysis of high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) parenchymal patterns have been shown to correlate with disease severity based on FVC and predict outcome in several fibrotic lung diseases, including IPF [3–5]. Electronic stethoscopes, which permit digital recording of lung sounds, potentially represent a simple, noninvasive and reproducible tool for evaluating disease severity and progression in patients with IPF. Although computerised lung sound analysis can discriminate between crackles due to pulmonary fibrosis and those due to pneumonia or heart failure [6–8], the utility of lung sounds for monitoring the course of the disease in these patients is still unknown. We have recently identified that typical “Velcro-type” crackles are closely correlated with the extent of several HRCT features, suggesting that lung sounds might facilitate the early detection of fibrotic lung disease [9]. In this prospective pilot study, we evaluated the longitudinal change in acoustic features of lung sounds recorded from patients with IPF and validated such features by examining correlations with several clinical, physiological and radiological parameters

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Identifiers

ORCID for Dragana Nikolic: orcid.org/0000-0002-9925-4814

ORCID for Anna Barney: orcid.org/0000-0002-6034-1478

ORCID for Sophie Fletcher: orcid.org/0000-0002-5633-905X

ORCID for Mark Jones: orcid.org/0000-0001-6308-6014

ORCID for Donna Davies: orcid.org/0000-0002-5117-2991

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