No abstract

Introduction to the symposium. Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in paediatric patients was reported as early as in 1932. In Burrill Crohn's first report from 1932 of 14 patients with the disease, a 17 year old adolescent was among them. In 1941 he described two boys with Crohn's disease (CD) and growth retardation and pubertal delay (1). At the Joint meeting of ESPGHAN and NASPGHAN in Paris 1980, there were just two abstracts on IBD, one from Boston, USA, and one from Sweden. Now, 26 years later, the interest in and knowledge of paediatric IBD has almost exploded, so a symposium for two and half days on the subject appears entirely appropriate.Porto Criteria. The ESPGHAN IBD-working group was initiated in the 1990s by Hans Buller, who at the time was working in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The working group focused initially on epidemiology and risk factors.