Summary of the Japanese Respiratory Society statement for the treatment of lung cancer with comorbid interstitial pneumonia

Abstract Dramatic progress in targeted therapy and immunotherapy has been changing clinical practices in lung cancer. With the accumulation of clinical practice, it has become clear that pre-existing interstitial pneumonia (IP) could be a risk factor for drug-induced lunginjury, which has enhanced awareness regarding the difficulty in treating lung cancerwith comorbidIP. Unfortunately, there is only low-grade evidence in the field of lung cancerwith comorbidIP, because almost all clinical trials exclude such patients. There have been very few specialized clinical trials for patients with lung cancerand underlying IPs thus far. Therefore, it is necessary to treat such cases empirically or to give up on the treatment itself. Considering these circumstances, establishing how to treat lung cancerwith comorbidIP is an urgent issue. This paper is a summary of the official statement reported by the Diffuse LungDisease/Thoracic Oncology Assembly and the Japanese Respiratory Society (JRS) in 2017, which attempts to approach lung cancerwith comorbidIP systematically.