Personalized Inflammatory Bowel Disease Care Reduced Hospitalizations

Background and AimsIBD patients with inadequately treated disease often relapse and require hospitalizations for further management. The purpose of this practice review was to determine whether personalized IBD care improved patient outcomes as measured by IBD-related hospitalizations.MethodsA dedicated IBD clinic was created for personalized patient care in a tertiary veterans health care center in 2014. In the first year, the care program consisted of patient-centered medical home (PCMH). In the second year, personalized biologic therapy was incorporated into the program, based on the severity of mucosal barrier dysfunction measured by probe-based confocal laser endomicroscopy (pCLE) analysis of the terminal ileum during colonoscopy. IBD-related hospitalizations during these 2years were compared to the year before the care program.ResultsThe IBD-related admissions at baseline, year 1 and 2 of the program were: total number of admissions of 25, 24, 8 (P=0.03) per year, total number of hospital days of 177, 144, 31days per year (P<0.01), median length of stay 7, 4, and 2days per visit (P=0.013), respectively. Patients had significant increases in serum hemoglobin (11.52.7, 11.9 +/- 2.6, 14.0 +/- 1.4g/dl; P=0.035), albumin (2.7 +/- 0.7, 3.0 +/- 0.6g/dl 3.7 +/- 0.8g/dl; P=0.031) and body mass index (26.6 +/- 2.9, 28.1 +/- 5.9; 34.0 +/- 10.8; P=0.047).Conclusions Personalized IBD care incorporating a PCMH model and tailored biologic therapy based on pCLE findings of mucosal barrier dysfunction significantly reduced IBD-related hospitalizations.