Search
André Schultz MBChB, PhD, FRACP Head, BREATH Team Head, BREATH Team Prof André Schultz is the Head, BREATH Team at The Kids Research Institute
Childhood asthma begins as wheeze (a whistling sound produced by the airways during breathing) during preschool age.
As both bronchiolitis and bronchiectasis are diseases of the airway surface, we will comprehensively study the airway surface and factors affecting the airway surface in infants hospitalised with bronchiolitis.
Surfactant, which was first identified in the 1920s, is pivotal to lower the surface tension in alveoli of the lungs and helps to lower the work of breathing and prevents atelectasis. Surfactant proteins, such as surfactant protein B and surfactant protein C, contribute to function and stability of surfactant film.
Addressing the recognized challenges and inequalities in providing high quality healthcare for rare diseases such as children's interstitial lung disease (chILD) requires collaboration across institutional, geographical, discipline, and system boundaries. The Children's Interstitial Lung Disease Respiratory Network of Australia and New Zealand (chILDRANZ) is an example of a clinical network that brings together multidisciplinary health professionals for collaboration, peer learning, and advocacy with the goal of improving the diagnosis and management of this group of rare and ultra-rare conditions.
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a rare, inherited, life-limiting condition predominantly affecting the lungs, for which there is no cure. The disease is characterized by recurrent pulmonary exacerbations (PEx), which are thought to drive progressive lung damage. Management of these episodes is complex and generally involves multiple interventions targeting different aspects of disease. The emergence of innovative trials and use of Bayesian statistical methods has created renewed opportunities for studying heterogeneous populations in rare diseases.
In children, chronic wet cough may be a sign of underlying lung disease, including protracted bacterial bronchitis (PBB) and bronchiectasis. Chronic (> 4 weeks in duration) wet cough (without indicators pointing to alternative causes) that responds to antibiotic treatment is diagnostic of PBB. Timely recognition and management of PBB can prevent disease progression to irreversible bronchiectasis with lifelong consequences. However, detection and management require timely health-seeking by carers and effective management by clinicians.
This position statement, updated from the 2015 guidelines for managing Australian and New Zealand children/adolescents and adults with chronic suppurative lung disease (CSLD) and bronchiectasis, resulted from systematic literature searches by a multi-disciplinary team that included consumers.
Asthma is the most common chronic lung disease in childhood. There has been a significant worldwide effort to develop tools/methods to identify children's risk for asthma as early as possible for preventative and early management strategies. Unfortunately, most childhood asthma prediction tools using conventional statistical models have modest accuracy, sensitivity, and positive predictive value.
Establishing the underlying cause in a child with chronic suppurative lung disease (CSLD) allows for targeted treatment and screening for associated complications. One cause of CSLD is primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD). Testing for PCD requires specialist expertise which is not widely available.