Mucosal Healing and Clinical Remission in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

Abstract

I read with interest the article by Baars et al. These authors studied the prevalence and severity of mucosal inflammation in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD) while in clinical remission. In addition, during follow-up they studied whether their findings impacted therapeutic strategies and disease course. Approximately one-third of patients had an intact mucosa at first endoscopy while one-third had endoscopic and histologic lesions and another third only histologic lesions. In most patients, in the authors’ centers, therapeutic strategy was not changed after endoscopy. Although in the long term mucosal inflammation fluctuated among the different groups (with and without initial lesions), the same was not associated with more frequent clinical relapses or stricture formation/ need for surgery. There were essentially no differences between patients with CD and UC...