Dr Steven Nathan Discusses the 2 Newly Approved Drugs to Treat IPF

The big news at the 2014 CHEST meeting in Austin, Texas, was that 2 new drugs—pirfenidone and nintedanib—were approved to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), according to Steven Nathan, MD, medical director of the Lung Transplant Program at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, VA.

Prior to these 2 drugs, which both slow the rate of decline of lung function, nothing had been approved to treat this fatal lung disease.

“[IPF] has a median survival of anywhere from 2-and-a-half to 5 years,” Dr Nathan explained. “So there’s been a lack of medical therapies for these conditions. So both of them offer some hope to patients with this condition.”