Journal of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases & Disorders

Background:The global incidence of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), Ulcerative Colitis (UC) and Crohn's Disease (CD), is in the rise. Despite the presence of some international studies that described the different patterns and characteristics if IBD, still however, we don't have a national epidemiological or descriptive data especially in Gaza Strip. The aim of this study is to identify socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of IBD among patients with IBD in Gaza.

Ulcerative colitis is a disease of increasing incidence and may progress to colonic cancer. Early detection of dysplastic changes is required. NBI is an added imaging procedure that is supposed to increase the yielding of diagnosis of ulcerative colitis.

Aim of the study: Validate the relation between histological pattern and NBI findings in diagnosing ulcerative colitis.

Patients and methods: 50 patients with diagnosed ulcerative colitis in Alexandria University Hospital were examined by colonoscopy and NBI then biopsies were taken from areas with detected lesions and histopathological examination was done.

Results: Patients were divided into active (27) and inactive (23) according to the clinical performance. From the 23 patients that were supposed to be inactive, 14 showed honeycomb appearance and 7 showed irregular vascular mucosal patterns by NBI examination. Histopathological examination revealed metaplasia in 55% of the patients that were under the category of inactive patients. There was a significant correlation between histological examination and NBI findings. NBI showed sensitivity of 58.3%, specificity of 100%, PPV of 100%, NPV of 23% and accuracy of 62.9% in active patients.

Conclusion: NBI is a valuable tool that can add value to colonoscopic examination in patients with ulcerative colitis.