What indicators do you use to determine whether a patient is having a favorable or unfavorable response to nintedanib?
When adding nintedanib what sort of treatment course do you counsel the patient on? Do you plan to continue it indefinitely as long as the patient tolerates it given that some degree of decline is still anticipated?
Answer from: at Community Practice
Unfortunately, there probably isn't a way to do this. It might be helpful to step back and see what nintedanib buys you: as compared to placebo, the nintedanib group suffered less FVC decline by ~110mL/year. Real-world data suggest there's probably a mortality benefit if you have your patients on it...
At the present time, the best we can achieve is slowing and stabilization of fibrosis. This is important because there is a direct correlation with decrement in lung function and the extent of disease as seen on HRCT with patient morbidity and mortality. Patient symptoms, FVC, DlCo, and HRCT are all...
I look for evidence of stabilization of decline in pulmonary function testing coupled with tolerability from a side effect standpoint. I always have a shared medical decision discussion with my patients. My goal is to stabilize their lung function (which hopefully translates into longer life lived, ...