Guidelines for the management of inflammatory bowel disease in adults

Ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD) (collectively termed inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)) are complex disorders reflected by wide variation in clinical practice. These guidelines, commissioned by the Clinical Services’ Committee of the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) for clinicians and allied professionals caring for patients with IBD in the United Kingdom, provide an evidence based document describing good clinical practice for investigation and treatment. The guidelines are intended to bring consistency, but should not necessarily be regarded as the standard of care for all patients. Individual cases must be managed on the basis of all clinical data available for that case. Patient preferences should be sought and decisions jointly made between patient and health professional. ### 1.1 Development of guidelines A comprehensive literature search was performed using electronic databases (Medline, PubMed, and Ovid; keywords: “inflammatory bowel disease”, “ulcerative colitis”, and “Crohn’s disease”) by Dr Carter. A preliminary document was drafted by Dr Carter, Dr Lobo, and contributing authors. This was summarised by Dr Travis and revised after circulation first to the committee and then to members of the IBD section of the BSG, before submission to the Clinical Services’ Committee. ### 1.2 Grading of recommendations1 The guidelines conform to the North of England evidence based guidelines development project. The grading of each recommendation is dependent on the category of evidence supporting it: ### 1.3 Scheduled review of guidelines The content and evidence base …