10 Symptoms of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF)

2. 2. Impossible to know how the disease will progress

Doctors lack the means to know how quickly a case of IPF is going to progress, and they cannot estimate its severity. With the aid of medications and other treatments, some patients keep the condition well under control and live on for a number of years. In other cases, the disease takes hold quickly, and treatments fail to hold it back. These patients suffer severe breathing problems leading to their death within a few years of diagnosis. Before medications were available, about half of those with IPF did not survive more than three years after their diagnosis.