Neonatal ARDS: it’s about time we take it to the next level

With great interest I have read the position paper in a recent issue of the Lancet Respiratory Medicine from De Luca and colleagues defining acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in neonates (Montreux neonatal ARDS definition) (1). As a historical landmark, this welcoming of neonates to the ARDS community comes exactly fifty years after the first published description of ARDS in twelve critically ill patients by Ashbaugh et al. in 1967 (2). By modifying the “A” in ARDS from its initial “adult” into “acute” in the early 80s, children were already recognized as potential ARDS patients, and now ARDS finally spans the whole age spectrum, ranging from newborn to elderly.