Noa Krugliak Cleveland, MD, on Time to Treatment Change and Remission Using Intestinal Ultrasound in IBD

Dr Krugliak Cleveland discusses her award-winning oral presentation on how the use of intestinal ultrasound can quickly identify inflammation among patients with IBD, helping to shorten the time to a change of therapy and helping to hasten remission in both ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.

Noa Krugliak Cleveland, MD, is an assistant professor of medicine and director of the Intestinal Ultrasound program at the University of Chicago. 

Hello, I'm Noa Krugliak Cleveland. I'm an assistant professor and director of the Intestinal Ultrasound Program at the University of Chicago. I'm here at the ACG in Vancouver and had the pleasure to present our research study on intestinal ultrasound and IBD that also received a research award. This study is on demonstrating the management by intestinal ultrasound, shortening time to treatment change, and also time to remission when compared to conventional management.

So this study was part of a prospective observational study at the University of Chicago where all patients received upadacitinib had regular phone calls from a clinical pharmacist at week 0, 2,4,12, and then every 4 weeks until week 52, where we collected clinical data, stool calprotectin, and also serum blood tests to assess their disease activity.

In our stab analysis, we analyzed patients retrospectively and compared patients who are monitored by intestinal ultrasound compared to patients who had conventional monitoring. All patients were matched by their IBD phenotype and also their IBD provider. Our primary endpoint was a time to treatment change and the secondary was time to remission. And ultimately what we've shown is that patients who were monitored by intestinal ultrasound had shorter time to treatment change—an average of 1 day —compared to conventional group who had an average time to treatment change of about 16 to 17 days.

And a time to remission in the intestinal ultrasound group was about 27 days compared to patients who were managed in the conventional manner who had about 55 days to remission. So in conclusion, our study shows that patients who are monitored by intestinal ultrasound have quicker change to their therapy and ultimately also achieve remission sooner than a current conventional management.