Crohn's & colitis 360
Assessing inflammation and predicting relapse in ulcerative colitis is more accurate when performed by IBD specialized gastroenterologists
By Alizadeh M, George LA, Abutaleb A and 13 others.
Abstract
Background
Ulcerative colitis is monitored through clinical, laboratory, endoscopic, and histologic measures. Persistence of histologic inflammation despite clinical and endoscopic remission is associated with disease flare.
Methods
We compared the identification of clinically significant histologic inflammation by general and IBD-specialized gastroenterologists (GI) using a simplified binary scoring system and looked at associations with disease relapse.
Results
Both general and IBD-specialized GIs identified significant inflammation associated with relapse, though IBD-specialized GIs scoring had stronger correlations with relapse.