Diagnosis and Treatment of Diffuse Interstitial Lung Diseases

Diffuse interstitial lung disease (DILD) is a category comprising a series of entities with similar clinical, radiologic, and lung function presentations, in which the principal pathological alterations affect the interstitial alveolar structures. The term DILD does not, in fact, properly describe the underlying pathogenetic mechanism of these clinical entities because they very often affect not only the interstitial alveolar structures, but also the small airways and the pulmonary vasculature.1,2