Timing of Surgical Intervention for Ulcerative Colitis in Pediatric Patients

: Ulcerative colitis (UC), an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) occurring in up to 25% of children and adolescents, is not without significant life-altering complications either from treatment and/or from underlying disease. Treatment for IBD involves medical and/or surgical therapy. With advances in medicine and development of biologic agents in the treatment of UC, pediatric patients with IBD may be having prolonged surgical referral and clinical symptoms. However, 25%-30% of patients with chronic UC still need surgical intervention despite advanced medical therapy. Timing of surgical referral, disease status (active symptoms), disease course (long or short term with treatment of corticosteroids, immunosuppression, and/or biologic agents), and surgeon preference determine whether a two- versus three-staged surgical procedure is needed. It is unknown whether the timing of surgical intervention or the staging of the procedure results in improved patient outcomes. A retrospective chart review of pediatric patients with the diagnosis of IBD over the last 10 years at a major academic pediatric medical center is being conducted to discover the total number of patients who had undergone surgical intervention for IBD with either a two- or three-staged surgical procedure and to learn whether timing of the surgical intervention resulted in a decrease in complication rates, hospitalization rates postsurgical intervention, length of stay, and hospital costs. Preliminary data on 39 patie...
Source: Journal of Pediatric Surgical Nursing - Category: Nursing Tags: Poster Abstracts Source Type: research