IBD survey accurately captures patient-reported symptoms

Last Updated: 2019-04-12

By Will Boggs MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Symptom Inventory accurately captures patient-reported symptoms and can be used to monitor patients in clinic or research settings, researchers from Canada report.

"An advantage of the tool we developed is that it can be used in Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC)," Dr. Charles N. Bernstein of the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, told Reuters Health by email. "This can be used in practice if clinicians want to follow a number in terms of how patients are doing. Patient could also complete the survey at home intermittently and send in results, so physicians could be aware of any changes that need attention."

Dr. Bernstein and colleagues developed two versions of the IBD Symptom Inventory (IBDSI): The 38-item long form (LF) comprehensively addresses IBD symptoms, including uncommon symptoms that would be clinically important, while the 26-item short form (SF) eliminates some of the less common IBD-related complications and is useful for brief or repeated administrations.

The IBDSI-LF correlated highly with the clinician-administered Harvey Bradshaw Index for Crohn's disease (HBI) and Powell-Tuck index for ulcerative colitis (PTI); it also correlated well with the clinician-rated global assessment of disease status.

Similarly, the three main subscales of the IBDSI-SF (bowel symptoms, abdominal discomfort, and fatigue) correlated well with the gastroenterologist's global assessment and clinician-rated disease status in CD and in UC, the researchers report in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, online March 27.

The IBDSI-LF showed significant stepwise differences in symptomatic disease activity with increasing disease severity on all measures.

A cutoff score of >24 on the IBDSI-LF identified active disease on the HBI with 93% accuracy, while a cutoff score of >17 identified active disease on the PTI with 95% accuracy. Cutoff scores of >14 and >13, respectively, on the short form identified active disease on the HBI with 94% accuracy and on the PTI with 97% accuracy.

"Overall," the researchers conclude, "the IBDSI is a promising new tool for the assessment of patient-reported symptom experiences in IBD - in clinical and research settings alike."

SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2Gf3VoS

Inflamm Bowel Dis 2019.