CIPF meeting: 10–11 March 2016, Prague
This meeting of IPF specialists was attended by physicians from many Central and Eastern European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia), but also from Switzerland, Germany, Canada or Israel.
Conference participants were particularly interested in the comparison of treatment availability. It turned out that as much as 27% of conference participants had no access at all to any antifibrotic therapy, 41% of them had to ask for therapy in each individual patients, while only 22% of them were entitled to prescribe nintedanib and/or pirfenidone for their patients.
Slovenia has one centre for IPF diagnosis and treatment for its entire population of 2.06 million. Each Slovenian patient is examined only once in this centre, and that is at the time of diagnosis; any pulmonary specialist is then entitled to prescribe therapy for this patient. Poland, with its population of 38.5 million, has not yet introduced a system of IPF centres; antifibrotic therapy is generally not available for Polish patients, apart from the possibility of participation in a clinical trial in one of eleven university hospitals. Hungary has 10 million inhabitants, and there are five IPF centres in the country. Antifibrotic therapy (nintedanib) has been available for IPF patients since 2015, but pirfenidone is not available for Hungarian patients.
Switzerland turned out to be the only country where antifibrotic therapy can be prescribed “without limits”, i.e. in all patients diagnosed with IPF, regardless of their pulmonary function. Once the treatment is started, it does not have to be terminated even after a decrease in pulmonary function: Swiss patients can thus be treated for the rest of their lives.
4. 4. 2016 plicnifibroza.cz
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