Medical Treatments for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis: a Protocol for a Systematic Review and Network Meta-analysis

Abstract Background: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a respiratory disorder of unknown etiology with a poor prognosis. There are novel therapies that have been studied in randomized controlled trials since the last network meta-analysis that may be of interest to academics and clinicians.Methods: We will perform a network meta-analysis on eligible randomized controlled trials of patients with IPF. We intend to search MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane and clinicaltrials.org in order to complete a comprehensive search for adult IPF patients being treated with at least one of 21 of the selected medical therapies. A team will screen and extract eligible trials. We will perform Bayesian random-effects network meta-analysis. We will use GRADE and RoB 2.0 to assess the certainty and quality of the evidence. Discussion: There is a need for an updated meta-analysis on IPF medical therapies, including novel medical therapies. We intend on studying up to 21 medical therapies in the network meta-analysis to provide the most accurate and updated summary of the evidence for IPF treatments. Systematic review registrations: https://osf.io/afbhd/