About Us

Head: Andrew Bush
Secretary: Monika Gappa

The Paediatrics Assembly encompasses all the different fields of respiratory medicine that relate to infants and children. All of the different fields have growth and development as a common underpinning link. The seven Scientific Groups of the Assembly reflect their other adult counterparts in the ERS.

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Group 07.01 Paediatric Respiratory Physiology

Chair: Peter J.F.M. Merkus
Secretary: Paul Aurora

We are a very active Group and our main interest is the assessment of lung function in all its aspects through childhood, with a special interest in techniques applicable to infants and very young children. Several members of the group have been active in a joint ERS and ATS Task Force on Infant Respiratory Function Testing. As this is a rapidly developing field, exciting new methods (such as those to assess small airways and ventilation homogeneity) are evaluated and discussed. More recently, some of these newer techniques have been applied to infants and young children with chronic lung disease, such as bronchopulmonary dysplasia and cystic fibrosis, giving new insight into the pathophysiology of these disorders. The task now is to bridge the gap from infancy through childhood using these new techniques and to correlate findings with other markers of lung disease. Therefore, other noninvasive methods of assessing lung function, such as inflammatory markers in exhaled air and imaging, are also within the scope of our Group. In addition, our Group members are also actively involved in assessing control of breathing and lung function during intensive care treatment, linking this Group to most other Groups within this Assembly. Future collaboration with other Assemblies or Groups will be emphasised at high-quality Symposia and other scientific activities.

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Group 07.02 Paediatric Asthma and Allergy

Chair: Paul L.P. Brand
Secretary: Marielle Pynenburg

This Group has more than 300 members worldwide, with more and more members coming from the CECEC region. Significantly, an increasing number of abstracts have come from these countries. Our Group is one of the largest within the ERS. Its aims are to:

• play an active role in developing interesting symposia for the ERS Annual Congress 
• develop guidelines for the management of recurrent wheezing in young children 
• increase awareness of allergy as a significant health problem in children 
• cooperate actively with the Paediatric Section of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

The Group Chair and Secretary welcome any suggestions ERS members might have to achieve its goals.

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Group 07.03 Cystic Fibrosis

Chair: Felix Ratjen
Secretary: Anders Lindblad

Our Group focuses on Cystic fibrosis (CF), a complex, challenging and multidisciplinary disease. Our Symposia and poster sessions during the ERS congress are a lively platform where paediatricians, paediatric pulmonologists, pulmonologists, microbiologists, radiologists and allied respiratory health professionals meet and discuss their interests. In CF, new therapeutic strategies and diagnostic tools are applied which often find their way into the treatment of other pulmonary diseases. The care of CF patients is a team effort and we therefore, aim for close collaboration with other Groups with whom we share common interests. We encourage our members to submit their abstracts on CF and for their active input.

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Group 07.04 Paediatric Respiratory Infection and Immunology

Chair: Matti Korppi
Secretary: Jeannette E. Dankert-Roelse

Our Group offers an unique opportunity for colleagues from all countries to present and share their experience and research in respiratory infection and immunology, which represents a major part of lung disease in children. The increasing number of abstracts submitted to our Group for the annual Congress reflects the importance of this area and the dynamism of Group members. More importantly, we offer you the possibility to have an active input in future congresses by suggesting topics and speakers of your interest. To increase the participation of our members in group activity, not only during the congresses, we decided to prepare some guidelines for the most common paediatric respiratory illnesses, such as croup, bronchiolitis and pneumonia. These guidelines are easily understandable by all paediatricians, especially those from Central and Eastern Europe. The guidelines will be sent to our members before the Congress, discussed at the business meeting in Glasgow and then published on the ERS Website.

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Group 07.05 Neonatology and Paediatric Intensive Care

Chair: Sailesh Kotecha
Secretary: Robert I. Ross-Russell

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Group 07.06 Paediatric Respiratory Epidemiology

Chair: Claudia Kuehni
Secretary: Stephen Turner

This Group consists of epidemiologists, paediatricians and other health professionals and health scientists with interests in the early origins and environmental/genetic contributions to paediatric respiratory disease. The focus is on common paediatric disorders including asthma and other obstructive diseases, such as bronchiolitis and laryngotracheobronchitis, but also includes respiratory infections, and rare acquired and congenital lung diseases and their long-term outcomes. There are strong associations with the Epidemiology Group of the Occupation and Epidemiology Assembly and with the Respiratory Physiology, Asthma and Allergy, and Infection and Respiratory Immunology Groups of the Paediatric Assembly. An emerging area of interest is genetic epidemiology. The Chair and secretary welcome suggestions from other Groups or members of the Society for joint workshops, Congress Symposia and at other sponsored scientific meetings throughout the year.

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Group 07.07 Paediatric Bronchology

Chair: Angelo Barbato
Secretary: Fabio Midulla

To date, the main interest of this Group has been investigation of the paediatric (upper and lower) airways by endoscopy including special procedures, such as bronchoalveolar lavage, and bronchial and transbronchial biopsy, and their respective applications in different respiratory disorders from infancy to adolescence. Group members are involved in teaching programmes, mainly the annual paediatric hands-on flexible bronchoscopy course (endorsed by the ERS School), held for the first time in 2001. Having completed the above standardisation projects, the scope of activities of our Group will extend, e.g. to noninvasive new imaging techniques, such as virtual endoscopy, as well as noninvasive methods to study airway inflammation in paediatric lung diseases. We are interested in interacting and cooperating with other Groups and would like to encourage ERS members to get actively involved in our Group.