Epidemiological profile of inflammatory bowel disease in Caxias do Sul, Brazil: a cross-sectional study.

Thianan Ricardo Souza,Mateus Dal Castel,Vincent Marin Dall'Oglio,Eduardo Brambilla,Jonathan Soldera,Raul Angelo Balbinot,Renan Souza De Macedo,Ana Laura Facco Muscope,Rafael Sartori Balbinot,Silvana Sartori Balbinot,Thanize Barbosa De Oliveira

doi:10.1590/1516-3180.2020.0179.r2.10092020

Abstract

Inflammatory bowel diseases affect mostly young patients and have a huge impact on their quality of life and growing treatment costs. Currently, there are few Brazilian studies concerning their epidemiological profile. The aim of this study was to describe the regional clinical and epidemiological profile of these pathological conditions in Caxias do Sul, Brazil. Cross-sectional study in Caxias do Sul (RS), Brazil. A search for patients was conducted in the municipality's special medications pharmacy using the International Classification of Diseases, and medical records were manually reviewed for data collection. Sixty-seven patients were included. The patients' mean age was 46.5 years and females predominated (71.6%). Ulcerative colitis was the most prevalent disease (70%) and Montreal E3 was the most prevalent presentation. The mean age at diagnosis was 39 years. Most patients had recently undergone colonoscopy (67%). Only five patients (7.4%) had records of hospital admission due to the disease, while 12 (18%) underwent a surgical procedure during follow-up. Sixty patients (89.5%) were using aminosalicylates, while less than one fifth were using immunosuppressants or immunobiological drugs: 19.4% and 14.9%, respectively. The profile of inflammatory bowel disease patients in this region of Brazil is similar in some characteristics to other published Brazilian data, although it differs in others such as higher frequency of pancolitis. A prospective study on these patients is planned in this region, in order to improve the data quality.

Highlights

Inflammatory bowel diseases comprise two major disorders: ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease
The statistical analysis on the data consisted of presentation of percentages for qualitative variables, and simple frequencies, averages and standard deviations for quantitative variables. These analyses were done using the IBM SPSS statistical software, version 15.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, United States). This was a cross-sectional study investigating the profile of patients with inflammatory bowel disease, based on a review of medical records
Ulcerative colitis was the most common disease, presented by 47 patients (70.2%), while 16 (23.8%) had Crohn’s disease and four cases (6%) were undetermined

Summary

Introduction

Inflammatory bowel diseases comprise two major disorders: ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease These two pathological conditions have distinct and, at the same time, overlapping clinical characteristics, which might occasionally lead to indeterminate classification. There is a lack of clinical-epidemiological studies about inflammatory bowel disease in South America.[1,2] The factors that have been responsible for the remarkable increases in incidence of these diseases, especially in industrialized countries, are still unknown. CONCLUSION: The profile of inflammatory bowel disease patients in this region of Brazil is similar in some characteristics to other published Brazilian data, it differs in others such as higher frequency of pancolitis. A prospective study on these patients is planned in this region, in order to improve the data quality

Methods

Results

Conclusion