Abstract

Abstract Introduction The relationship between sinusitis and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has not yet been established. Though the two are characterized by dysfunction of the epithelial barrier, there lacks evidence on the relative contributions of infection or inflammation to this co-morbidity in IBD patients. Previous analysis from our group (ACG 2019) identified an increased prevalence of sinusitis among patients with IBD, but that work did not include a stratified analysis of IBD patients with sinusitis based on the order in which these conditions were diagnosed. Methods This is a retrospective study at our tertiary IBD center. We utilized our institution’s electronic medical record data warehouse of 2.4 million patients to identify those with diagnostic codes for both sinusitis (J32) and IBD (K50.90 and K51.90). Patients with a confirmed diagnosis of IBD and/or sinusitis between January 2000 and May 2019 and age ≥18 years were included. Demographic and disease related information were collected, including dates of diagnosis for both sinusitis and IBD. Categorical variables were analyzed using Fisher’s exact test and continuous variables were analyzed using Wilcoxon rank sum test. Results Of 14,366 patients with IBD, 386 patients (2.69%) were diagnosed with both IBD and sinusitis (IBD+S). The average age of IBD diagnosis in the IBD only group was 37.30 (18.76) years and IBD+S group was 38.36 (19.81) years (p = 0.27). Of the 386 patients with IBD+S, 268 (69.4%) were diagnosed with IBD before sinusitis and 118 (30.6%) were diagnosed with IBD after sinusitis (Table 1). The average age of IBD diagnosis in the IBD before sinusitis group was 33.2 ± 17.3 years, which was significantly younger than patients in the IBD after sinusitis group of 50.2 ± 20.2 years (p < 0.001). The average time between diagnoses was significantly more in the group diagnosed with IBD before sinusitis compared with the group diagnosed with IBD after sinusitis (7.64 ± 8.89 years vs 3.73 ± 3.16 years, respectively; p < 0.001). In addition, patients diagnosed with IBD after sinusitis were significantly less likely to be of white race, never smokers, have Crohn’s disease, bowel obstruction, or be receiving immunosuppressive medications. Conclusions There are significant differences in the characteristics of patients with IBD and sinusitis from IBD only patients, and even greater differences when stratifying the IBD+S group based on the order of diagnoses. Within the subgroup of IBD+S, most notably, patients with sinusitis first have an older age of IBD diagnosis. These findings suggest that a diagnosis of sinusitis should prompt consideration of co-existing or subsequent risk of IBD.

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