Concise Commentary: Crystallomancy and Ileal Pouch Surgery

Excerpt

While the creation of an ileal pouch is a great leap forward in improving quality of life in patients with UC requiring surgery, even this surgeon will admit that long-term inflammatory conditions plague the outcomes of many patients. Identification of preoperative clinical and serologic markers that can robustly predict these adverse postoperative outcomes remains elusive. In this issue of Digestive Diseases and Sciences, authors from the IBD unit at the University of Chicago evaluated whether pathologic evaluation of the resected colon could predict pouch outcomes [1]. Their primary findings were that deep wall inflammation was associated with pouch fistulæ and that terminal ileal inflammation was associated with afferent limb involvement. …