Overnight desaturation in interstitial lung diseases: links to pulmonary vasculopathy and mortality

Overnight desaturation predicts poor prognosis across interstitial lung diseases (ILDs). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether nocturnal desaturation is associated with pulmonary vasculopathy and mortality.

A retrospective single centre study of 397 new ILD patients was carried out including patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) (n=107) and patients with non-IPF fibrotic ILD (n=290). This is the largest study to date of the effect of significant nocturnal desaturation (SND) (≥10% of total sleep time with oxygen saturation ≤90% measured by pulse oximetry).

The prevalence of SND was 28/107 (26.2%) in IPF and 80/290 (27.6%) in non-IPF ILD. The prevalence of SND was higher in non-IPF ILDs than in IPF (p=0.025) in multivariate analysis. SND was associated with noninvasive markers of pulmonary hypertension (PH): tricuspid regurgitation velocity (TRV) (p<0.0001), brain natriuretic peptide (p<0.007), carbon monoxide transfer coefficient (p<0.0001), A-a gradient (p<0.0001), desaturation >4% in 6-min walking test (p<0.03) and pulmonary artery diameter (p<0.005). SND was independently associated with high echocardiographic PH probability in the entire cohort (OR 2.865, 95% CI 1.486-5.522, p<0.002) and in non-IPF fibrotic ILD (OR 3.492, 95% CI 1.597-7.636, p<0.002) in multivariate analysis. In multivariate analysis, SND was associated with mortality in the entire cohort (OR 1.734, 95% CI 1.202-2.499, p=0.003) and in IPF (OR 1.908, 95% CI 1.120-3.251, p=0.017) and non-IPF fibrotic ILD (OR 1.663, 95% CI 1.000-2.819, p=0.041). Separate models with exclusion of each one of the diagnostic subgroups showed that no subgroup was responsible for this finding in non-IPF ILDs. SND was a stronger marker of 5-year mortality than markers of PH.

SND was associated with high echocardiographic probability and mortality and was a stronger predictor of mortality in IPF and non-IPF ILDs grouped together to power the study.