• paediatric interstitial lung disease
• paediatric lung disaese

Childhood interstitial and diffuse lung diseases (chILD) are a heterogeneous and diverse group of rare lung disorders presenting in childhood. Unfortunately, there are few therapies and poor understanding of the natural history for most disorders. Patients encounter high morbidity and mortality. Through the establishment of national research networks and registries such as chILD EU in the European Union, chILD Research Network in the USA and the chILDRANZ: children’s interstitial lung disease research in Australia and New Zealand, progress has begun to better understand patients with chILD. The chILD EU group published two landmark manuscripts in Thorax demonstrating the value of these registries to further advance the care of these patients through evidence-based studies.

Defining acute exacerbations (AEs) and understanding their clinical impact and outcome is essential to moving chILD research forward. Seidl et al in their manuscript ‘Acute Exacerbations in Children’s Interstitial Lung Disease-A chILD-EU Cohort Study’1 provides a definition for chILD AEs that can be used as standardised criteria in future …