Quantification of Mucosal Activity from Colonoscopy Reports via the Simplified Endoscopic Mucosal Assessment for Crohn's Disease

Inflamm Bowel Dis. 2022 Oct 3;28(10):1537-1542. doi: 10.1093/ibd/izab315.

Abstract

Background: Endoscopic mucosal healing is the gold standard for evaluating Crohn's disease (CD) treatment efficacy. Standard endoscopic indices are not routinely used in clinical practice, limiting the quality of retrospective research. A method for retrospectively quantifying mucosal activity from documentation is needed. We evaluated the simplified endoscopic mucosal assessment for CD (SEMA-CD) to determine if it can accurately quantify mucosal severity recorded in colonoscopy reports.

Methods: Pediatric patients with CD underwent colonoscopy that was video recorded and evaluated via Simple Endoscopic Score for CD (SES-CD) and SEMA-CD by central readers. Corresponding colonoscopy reports were de-identified. Central readers blinded to clinical history and video scoring were randomly assigned colonoscopy reports with and without images. The SEMA-CD was scored for each report. Correlation with video SES-CD and SEMA-CD were assessed with Spearman rho, inter-rater, and intrarater reliability with kappa statistics.

Results: Fifty-seven colonoscopy reports were read a total of 347 times. The simplified endoscopic mucosal assessment for CD without images correlated with both SES-CD and SEMA-CD from videos (rho = 0.82, P < .0001 for each). The addition of images provided similar correlation. Inter-rater and intrarater reliability were 0.93 and 0.92, respectively.

Conclusions: The SEMA-CD applied to retrospective evaluation of colonoscopy reports accurately and reproducibly correlates with SES-CD and SEMA-CD of colonoscopy videos. The SEMA-CD for evaluating colonoscopy reports will enable quantifying mucosal healing in retrospective research. Having objective outcome data will enable higher-quality research to be conducted across multicenter collaboratives and in clinical registries. External validation is needed.

Keywords: Crohn’s disease; disease activity; mucosal healing.

Publication types

  • Multicenter Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Child
  • Colonoscopy
  • Crohn Disease* / diagnostic imaging
  • Crohn Disease* / drug therapy
  • Humans
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Retrospective Studies
  • Severity of Illness Index