Bowel Ultrasound versus Endoscopic Findings in Crohn’s Disease

Abstract

Abstract Background Inflammatory bowel diseases include Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), are chronic, relapsing-remitting diseases that constitute a growing worldwide health burden. Crohn’s disease is a chronic relapsing lifelong condition disease. It is characterized by trans-mural inflammation of bowel wall and by skip lesions that may be found in any segment of the gastro- intestinal tract Objective To improve management of patients with Crohn's disease, objective measurements of disease activity are needed. We evaluated BUS activity finding in comparison to Endoscopic findings with introduction of new BUS score. Subjects and Methods Thirty-two adult patients with Crohn's disease were included in our study. They were presented to our IBD clinic at Tropical Medicine Department, Ain Shams university in the period from 2022 to 2023. All our patients were subjected to history taking, clinical evaluation, laboratory investigations and diagnostic evaluation, BUS and colonoscopy. Results Our results paved the way for the use of BUS as a simple and non-invasive tool for monitoring activity and follow up CD patient although more studies with longer follow up periods may be needed to confirm our findings. Conclusion Bowel ultrasound considered an efficient tool for diagnosing and locating bowel lesions with its extramural extent and complications. It can be used to assess the degree of activity and thus an important tool for follow-up. Bowel ultrasound has the potential to become a tool for monitoring of bowel inflammatory activity in patients with Crohn’s disease, it allows the location & extent of the disease and complications, thus can be used in long-term follow-up. Bowel ultrasound is a good predictor for crohn’s activity with sensitivity and specificity 100% and 100% respectively. Bowel ultrasound score range from 2-8 with cut of point 4 (mild less than <2, Moderate from 2-4, Severe more than >4) can be used as indicator for activity of the disease.