Miyamura T, et al. - Given that among patients with IP, acute exacerbation of interstitial pneumonia (AE-IP) represents a serious complication of pulmonary surgery, researchers sought for the frequency of AE-IP following non-pulmonary surgery and examined its risk factors. Comparison of the frequency of AE-IP after pulmonary surgery with that after non-pulmonary surgery was performed under the same conditions for the first time in this study. They performed a retrospective investigation of 151 patients with IP who underwent pulmonary surgery and 291 who underwent non-pulmonary surgery. Five (3.3%) patients in the pulmonary surgery group and 4 (1.4%) patients in the non-pulmonary surgery group developed AE-IP; the difference was not statistically significant. Predictor of AE-IP in the non-pulmonary surgery group was a high preoperative C-reactive protein level.