Balloon-Assisted Enteroscopy and Capsule Endoscopy in Suspected Small Bowel Crohn's Disease

Inflammatory bowel diseases are idiopathic inflammatory diseases of two main types, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Crohn's disease can affect the entire gastrointestinal tract, and the distal ileum is involved in up to 70% of patients. Moreover, Crohn's disease in one-quarter to one-third of patients involves isolation of the small bowel. Due to the nonspecific symptoms and anatomical location of the disease, small bowel Crohn's disease is a phenotype that is particularly difficult to manage. Since the introduction of capsule endoscopy in 2000 and balloon-assisted enteroscopy in the 21st century, it is now possible to directly inspect for small bowel Crohn's disease. However, the new modalities still have limitations, such as capsule retention and invasiveness of balloon-assisted enteroscopy. The diagnostic yields of both capsule endoscopy and balloon-assisted enteroscopy are high for patients with suspected small bowel Crohn's disease. Therefore, earlier use of capsule endoscopy or balloon-assisted enteroscopy can help with the diagnosis and earlier treatment of these patients to avert possible disastrous outcomes.

Correlation analyses among Capsule Endoscopy Scroring Index, simplified Crohn Disease Activity Index and C-reactive protein in small bowel Crohn disease / 中华消化内镜杂志

ObjectiveTo investigate the correlation between any two of Capsule Endoscopy ScroringIndex (Lewis score),simplified Crohn Disease Activity Index (CDAI) and C-reactive protein (CRP) in small bowel Crohn disease (CD).MethodsA total of 58 consecutive patients with known small bowel CD were enrolled. We evaluated disease activity with Lewis score and simplified CDAI. Correlations among CRP,simplified CDAI and Lewis score were calculated with Spearman's rank order correlation coefficient.The optimal CRP cut-off value was calculated using the ROC curve.ResultsThe Lewis score showed inactive,mild and moderate-severe patients were 13,21 and 24,respectively.CRP of moderate-severe group was significantly higher than that in mild and inactive groups ( P ＜ 0.05 ).The optimal CRP cut-off value that differentiated patients with moderate to severe disease from the others was 13.50 mg/L with sensitivity of 87.5％ and specificity of 82.4％.The area under the ROC curve to analyze the cut-off was 0.849.Lewis score was moderately correlated with CRP (r =0.58,P ＜ 0.01 ),and weakly correlated with the simplified CDAI (r =0.40,P ＜ 0.01 ).ConclusionSerum CRP and the simplified CDAI cannot replace Lewis score for capsule endoscopy in the assessment of disease activity in small bowel CD.However,CRP may be considered as an inflammatory marker for evaluating the moderate to severe capsule endoscopic activity.