For a study, researchers sought to ascertain the population-level relationship between surgical intervention and the usage of biological treatment for pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (PIBD).

For all admissions in England between 1997 and 2015 included children aged 0 to 18 and had an ICD-10 code for the diagnosis of Crohn’s disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC), or inflammatory bowel disease-unclassified (IBD-U). In addition, major surgical resections related to PIBD and biological treatment were also given Office of Population Censuses and Surveys Classification of Surgical Operations and Procedures codes. The median values for the data are shown (interquartile range).

The overall number of kids with a diagnosis of PIBD was 22,645; of them, 13,722 (61%) had CD, 7,604 (34%) had UC, and 1,319 (5.7%) had IBD-U. 4,054 (17.9%) instances involved the use of biological treatment. In 3,212 (14%) patients, surgical resection was performed, more frequently for CD than UC (17.5 vs. 10.3%, P<0.0001). In CD and UC, it took 8.3 (1.2-28.2) months and 8.2 (0.8-21.3) months, respectively, from the diagnosis to the main surgical resection. The frequency of surgical intervention dropped throughout the dataset’s time period (P=0.04), whereas the prevalence of biological therapy grew (P<0.0001). Additionally, there were more new PIBD diagnoses.

Biologic medicines have been linked to a decline in the number of children with a known diagnosis of PIBD requiring surgery. They will be able to tell as time goes on if biological treatments completely eliminate the need for surgery or merely postpone it till maturity.

Reference: journals.lww.com/jpgn/Abstract/2022/09000/The_Influence_of_the_Introduction_of_Biologic.17.aspx

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