Pre-school wheezing remains an unresolved medical problem. Pre-school children (5 y) with wheeze consume disproportionately high healthcare resources compared to older children and adults, representing diagnostic challenges. Wheezing occurs commonly during infancy and pre-school age, and as a symptom, it may result from various causes, both infectious and noninfectious. Pediatriciansworldwide manage children with the first and subsequent wheezing episodes with various treatments ranging from purely supportive management to polypharmacy and systemic therapies. Along with current understanding, the critical task is to identify those withT2 phenotypes or might respond to ‘asthma’ treatment. Some infants will develop persistent or recurrent wheezing, which often becomes severe, leading to referral to allergy specialists for further evaluation and treatment of asthma. Several guidelines exist for diagnostic workup in older children with asthma or address only a limited range of issues, and such EAACI recommendations are lacking for wheezing infants and preschoolers. As diagnosing and treating pre-school wheezing represents a challenge, EAACI established a Task Force to develop the EAACI position on diagnosing and treating wheezing in preschoolers. This international multidisciplinary group will propose answers to frequently asked clinical questions, present practical,consensus-based management suggestions based on published data, and critically appraise asthma prevention methods in wheezy preschoolers. Questions and possible answers regarding pre-school wheeze based on high-quality evidence will be elaborated. A pragmatic Oxford CEBM evidence-based methodology for recommendation quality will be agreed upon in a Delphi process. Implementation includes standard dissemination strategies. We will provide clinically convenient phenotyping of pre-school wheeze associated with different patient genetics, pathogenesis, clinical appearance, short-and-long-term outcomes, and phenotype-specific responses to treatment options.

Chair: Wojciech Feleszko
Secretary: Tuomas Jartti