Despite improved treatments and regular check-ups, people with IBD – which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis – still have a higher risk of developing and dying from bowel, or colorectal, cancer compared to the general population.
A person’s risk of developing bowel cancer may depend on different factors, for example: how long they have had IBD; which part of their bowel is affected; or the severity of inflammation they experience.
Among the recommendations in the new guidelines, developed for the British Society of Gastroenterology and published in the UK journal Gut, are that all IBD patients have a colonoscopy around eight years after their symptoms start, and that any patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis – a rare condition that causes inflammation of the bile ducts and sometimes liver damage – should have a colonoscopy at diagnosis.
These guidelines provide accurate, up-to-date advice for clinicians working with IBD patients, to give them the tools they need to give the best possible care and treatment for their patients. That might relate to how to discuss the risk of colorectal cancer with individual IBD patients; when to start and stop surveillance, how often it should happen and who should receive it; how to organise services and support patients; and a wide range of other issues that might arise.
- Professor James East, Consultant Gastroenterologist and Endoscopist at the University of Oxford’s Translational Gastroenterology and Liver Unit and first author on the paper
This work was supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) and the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre (BRC).