Historically, the ILD PAK REGISTRY was first established in 2008 where data from multiple centers in the metropolitan city of Karachi was recorded from January 2008 onwards.
No published data was available on the profile of interstitial lung diseases in Pakistan before the presentation of this Registry data 2008-11 at the ERS Congress 2012 in Vienna, Austria ( published ERJ 2012:40 :711. )
Subsequent data from Jan 2012 to August 2013 was presented at the ACCP World Congress 2014 in Madrid,Spain ( published Chest 2014:145: 241A). Other interesting set of data pertaining to the incidence of IPF and Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis in the avian exposed segment of an urban population was presented at the ACCP World Congress 2016 in Shanghai, China, ( published Chest 149(4):A411, April 2016.)
The ILDPAK project was pioneered by Dr. Mosavir Ansarie, a senior pulmonologist of repute with a known interest in ILD and Chairman of the Pakistan Chest Society ILD Guideline Committee. The ILD PAK was then converted to a web based registry in 2011 which enabled the provision of access codes to several pulmonology centers in the country by 2014 when during the PCS Chestcon 2014 in Islamabad, these were invited to join this national registry effort.
The Pakistan Chest Society ILD Guideline committee also has to its credit the formulation and publication of the first National Guideline on ILD with focus on IPF, published in April, 2016 and presented at the PCS Chestcon, Lahore. Guideline focussed on NSIP and CTD related ILDs is planned to be published in early 2017.
The six year ILD PAK Registry Report published in June 2016 is the first multi center data published in the country.
To our knowledge, this is the first population based registry that attempts to provide an epidemiologic update of ILD trends in the recent years in a population segment of patients in Pakistan. The forte of this registry is its mandatory recording of HRCT and PFT investigations and the recording of exposure history and clinical manifestations without which no case was included. The electronic database support and direct data entry access to principal investigators across the country, along with the recently published PCS ILD National Guideline and this report will gather impetus towards the production and publication of further regional reports periodically. The PCS ILD PAK Registry can thus function on a national scale as a standardized recording and tracking mechanism in trends of presentation, incidence, prevalence, morbidity, mortality and treatment evaluation in future.
Thus 2016 has been a historic year for ILD in Pakistan as the PCS National Guideline and the ILD PAK Registry Report are recent important landmarks in the understanding of ILD in this country. (JPMA Editorial Sept 2016.)