Interstitial lung disease in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: comparison with cryptogenic fibrosing alveolitis over 5 years.

Objective: There is little information on the natural history of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and associated interstitial lung disease (ILD). Cryptogenic fibrosing alveolitis (CFA) is known to have a poor longterm prognosis, and we compared the 2 conditions through a longitudinal prospective study.

Methods: We previously compared baseline clinical, physiological, and radiological characteristics in 18 RA-ILD patients with 18 case controls with CFA.