A rare aspect of Crohn's disease: Pulmonary involvement in a child

Crohn's disease (CD), known as the disease of gastrointestinal system, is a granulamatous systemic disorder with extraintestinal manifestations including the respiratory system. The resemblance in the embriological origins and the immunities of both organ systems' mucosae, also the circulating immune complexes and the autoantibodies are accepted as contributing factors. The shift of inflammation may become prominent when the colon is removed after colectomy and independent of the bowel disease activity; pulmonary involvement may be exarbecated. In the pediatric population, CD associated pulmonary involvement is very rare, mainly in the form of subclinical alterations and the data are limited mostly to case reports. Therefore, it is possibly overlooked since the diagnosis relies on suspicion. We represent a 5-year-old CD patient with previous bronchiolitis episodes that might have resulted from CD-associated pulmonary involvement; whom later developed severe pneumonia resulting in acute respiratory distress syndrome and bronchiectasia following a colectomy operation.