The fifth International Congress on Rare Pulmonary Diseases and Orphan Drugs will take place in Milan, Italy, on February 8–9, 2013 (www.pulmonaryrarediseases.com). 10 yrs have passed since the first Congress was held. Since then, the Congress has taken place regularly every 2 yrs, with growing success and ever increasing numbers of participants and speakers from around the world. The International Congress on Rare Pulmonary Diseases and Orphan Drugs is the only European event dedicated to different types of rare pulmonary diseases affecting both parenchymal and vascular structures. Overall, more than 150 speakers and 650 participants have attended the past four Congresses, where scientific programmes are designed to build bridges between physicians specialised in the management of different lung disorders that have the common feature of being rare diseases, i.e. with prevalence lower than one per 2,000 persons according to the European definition.
Proceedings from the 2005 and 2009 Congresses have been published previously elsewhere [1, 2]. In the present issue of the European Respiratory Review (ERR), three selected articles focus on some of the most important and widely discussed topics from the fourth Congress held on February 25–26, 2011 [3–5]. These manuscripts summarise the two main scientific areas of discussion: 1) the basic science research, and 2) the prognostic evaluation …
