How is interstitial lung disease diagnosed?

How is interstitial lung disease diagnosed?

Interstitial lung disease is usually diagnosed from symptomology. And then we get a chest X-ray and we can see, on the chest X-ray, little fine little strands that develop in the lung. And if they develop in certain patterns, we are particularly suspicious. We can then get what we call a high-resolution CT scan, which allows us to look really close, slice-by-slice, into the interstitium of the lung, radiographically, and that's a really good way to diagnose interstitial lung disease. We can also do bronchoscopic procedures such as lung vavage when looking at interstitial lung disease. But the really, really important way to do this, if you really need to know the answer, is to just get a little piece of lung, look at it under the microscope, and you can develop an enormous amount of information from a lung biopsy. There are several ways to get a lung biopsy. You can get it by a bronchoscopy. Or you can send the patient off to a thoracic surgeon, who will make a little incision, usually in the left lung, right over the part of the lung called the lingula, and reach in there and get a little piece, sew it back up, and get that to the pathologist.