Palliative Care and End-of-Life Decisions in Interstitial Lung Disease

Purpose of ReviewThis review examines recent pulmonary and palliative medicine literature to evaluate the current state of palliative and end-of-life care in interstitial lung diseases (ILDs), addressing unmet needs, challenges, and evidence for best practices.Recent FindingsPatients with ILD and their caregivers do not receive timely and comprehensive supportive and palliative care due to barriers in initiating palliative care on the part of healthcare teams as well as patients and caregivers. Multidisciplinary teams with early integrated palliative care can offer better palliative care for patients with ILD and caregivers, facilitating better advance care planning, improved symptom control, and health-related quality of life.ILDs are associated with a high symptom burden for patients and a negative health impact on caregivers as well. Adoption of simple prognostication tools in clinical practice, additional training in essentials of palliative care, effective and safe non-pharmacological and pharmacological means of alleviating common symptoms, multidisciplinary care models, and telehealth are promising ways to address the gap between guidelines and implementation.