Diagnose und Monitoring bei chronisch-entzündlicher Darmerkrankung

Abstract

Diagnosis and Monitoring of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Abstract. The diagnosis and monitoring of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is based on several factors: Clinical history, physical examination, laboratory values (blood and stool), endoscopy, histology and imaging. No single feature establishes the diagnosis alone. In recent years, therapeutic goals in IBD have evolved from clinical endpoints to endoscopic or even histologic targets. However, these targets, e. g. mucosal healing, still have to be uniformly defined. Repeated endoscopies are ill-tolerated by patients, therefore surrogate-markers of mucosal inflammation such as calprotectin, have been investigated and showed good correlation with endoscopic findings. In Crohn's Disease, directing therapy with tight control, based, among others, on fecal calprotectin, has been superior to conventional therapy-monitoring and decision making. However, these initial results need further confirmation. Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) has emerged as a second monitoring entity in the long term treatment of IBD patients. Especially with the increasing use of biologics, reactive TDM (in patients who relapse) and to a lesser extent proactive TDM (in patients who are in clinical remission / stable disease) have been studied and results have been adopted in current guidelines. Future studies will have to better define treatment targets and further investigate the impact of tight-monitoring on disease outcome.