Abstract
The 40-year isolation of our country from Western Europe has meant a significant handicap in the field of CF diagnosis and treatment. In the last 17 years, however, we have managed to catch up with this development through aggressive treatment and following all the best practices recommended in Europe.
With this "unwanted experiment", we confirmed the importance of intensive modern healing, applied from the earliest possible age. The mortality and morbidity of our patients has dropped dramatically and early childhood death is now rare.
The height at 5 years in our youngest children after 1999 is almost -0.3 SD and none of them is below the specific standard of our population. In addition, the median FEV1 of these patients is 97% of the appropriate value (4).
The teams of CF centers in the Czech Republic work completely according to recognized international recommendations. The survival of our patients and their quality of life has improved significantly in the last decade.
We have thus achieved that newly diagnosed patients in our country have the same starting point for long-term survival and quality of life as their peers in Western Europe.