At your first visit, we’ll talk with you about how you’re feeling and your symptoms. You’ll meet with a few providers who may set up tests for you.
Plan for this first visit to take a full day.
Diagnosing Your Interstitial Lung Disease
On your first visit, we may perform tests to learn more about your interstitial lung disease and to look for a possible cause. We’ll also go over any tests you’ve had at other hospitals.
We'll need to measure:
- The extent of your lung damage, with pulmonary function testing
- Your oxygen levels and whether or not you need oxygen therapy, using pulse oximetry
- Your heart function, with an echocardiogram
None of these tests will hurt or require needles.
Tests that look for a cause of your ILD may include:
- Blood tests
- High-resolution chest CT scans
What to Bring
- Medical records — ask your provider to send us your medical record, including any recent clinic visits and hospitalization records
- Recent lab results
- Chest X-rays or CT scans — bring both the paper report and the images on a CD
- Pulmonary function test results
- Lung biopsy slides - bring both the paper report and the glass microscope slides (contact the pathology department at the hospital where your biopsy was done to get the slides)
- Insurance cards
Your Second ILD Visit
We’ll schedule a second visit for about a month after your first.
At this second visit, we’ll go over your test results and discuss your diagnosis and possible treatment plan. Plan for at least a 1-hour appointment.
Depending on your tests results, we may need to get biopsy samples from your lungs to look at under a microscope. Depending on the type of lung disease, we may obtain these samples using bronchoscopy or a surgical lung biopsy.
Getting to UVA
You'll get treatment for your ILD at our Pulmonary Clinic.
If you're traveling to get treatment, get information about traveling, parking and staying at UVA here.
Rescheduling Appointments & Cancellations
If you need to cancel or reschedule an appointment, please call us at 434.924.5219 as soon as possible.
Resources & Support
Our ILD patient support group meets every other month and is open to all. Email us for more information on our upcoming meetings.
Learn about ILD and lung disease:
Participating in Clinical Trials
Our clinical trials sometimes test new treatments for ILD, such as new medicines, ILD-specific exercise programs and ILD symptom monitoring. For more information, see our list of pulmonary clinical trials.
We also have an ongoing registry of ILD patients, which allows us to study the risk factors and genetics of patients who develop ILD.