Background:

idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a progressive, fatal disease character ized by the findings of usual interstitial pneumonia in a high resolution tomography or

lung biopsy, or in a multidisciplinary discussion, also discarding other etiologies such as connective tissue diseases or diseases associated with toxic exposure.

The objective of this work was to know the clinical characteristics, lung function and survival of the group of patients diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis who were evaluated at the Interstitial Lung Disease Clinic of the Hospital Carlos Andrade Marín.

Methods:

retrospective, cross-sectional, observational study. The study population consisted of patients diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis who had been treat ed at the Interstitial Lung Disease Clinic of the Hospital Carlos Andrade Marín between January, 2018 and February, 2020.

Results:

85.7% of the 35 patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis included in the analysis were male. At the time of the diagnosis, the mean age was 69.7 years (SD [standard deviation]: 9.26, range: 38-87 years). 20% and 37.1% of patients showed dyspnea grade 3 and 4, respectively. 60% had smoking history.

45.7% of the diagnoses were made with a multidisciplinary clinical evaluation and high resolution computed axial tomography.

Conclusions:

we have reported the largest cohort of patients with idiopathic pulmo nary fibrosis in Ecuador; our results identified similar populations with other study groups where the high resolution computed tomography and multidisciplinary analysis are the most used methods for the diagnosis.

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