Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology. As a result, these patients could gain quicker access to alternative colon-saving therapies.
Physicians typically administer corticosteroids to patients admitted to the hospital with severe ulcerative colitis, but about one-third of these patients don't respond to the treatment. The small pilot study showed that bowel thickness measurements on ultrasound scans may indicate which patients are more likely to need salvage therapy.
"The key finding was that the simple measurement of bowel wall thickness of affected colonic segments at admission provided a clear guide to subsequent failure of steroids," wrote the authors, led by Dr. Rebecca Smith, a gastroenterologist at Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia.