Clinical features of three fatal cases of non-specific interstitial pneumonia

We describe the clinical courses of the 3 fatal patients (2 females and 1 male) with idiopathic non-specific interstitial pneumonia (NSIP) among 24 patients with NSIP. Lung biopsies were diagnosed to be NSIP group II in all patients. The clinical courses from onset to death of these 3 patients were 41 months, 46 months, and 91 months. A follow-up chest CT demonstrated no apparent honey-comb formation. We found that i) about 20% of patients with NSIP died of respiratory failure, ii) in the chest CT findings, apparent honey-comb formation was rare even just before death, iii) prediction of the prognosis based on the histological findings was difficult. This is the first report to describe the clinical features of deceased patients with idiopathic NSIP; the incidence of fatal cases was considered to range from 10 to 20%.