Up to now no study has investigated the lag structure of children’s respiratory morbidity due to surface ozone. In the present study, we investigate the lag structure and the general effect of surface ozone exposure on children and adolescents’ respiratory morbidity using data from a particularly well suited area in southern Europe to assess the health effects of surface ozone. The effects of surface ozone are estimated using the recently developed distributed lag non-linear models, allowing for a relatively long timescale, while controlling for weather effects, a range of other air pollutants, and long and short term patterns. The public health significance of the estimated effects is higher than has been previously reported in the literature, providing evidence contrary to the conjecture that the surface ozone-morbidity association is mainly due to short-term harvesting. In fact, our data analysis reveals that the effects of surface ozone at medium and long timescales (harvesting-resistant) are substantially larger than the effects at shorter timescales (harvesting-prone), a finding that is consistent with all children and adolescents being affected by high surface ozone concentrations, and not just the very frail.

Pulmonary artery sling is a rare congenital condition often associated with congenital tracheal stenosis. Untreated pulmonary sling carries a high morbidity and mortality, most of which is due to the airway and other associated anomalies rather than the aberrant artery itself. We report the case of an infant presenting progressive respiratory distress after a viral infection. The workup revealed a left pulmonary sling with concomitant tracheal stenosis. This anomaly was successfully corrected by slide tracheoplasty and left pulmonary artery reinsertion. Conclusion pulmonary artery sling is a rare entity with a nonspecific clinical presentation, a high degree of clinical suspicion is needed in order to obtain the correct diagnosis.

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