A Softer Way to Outpace Children’s IBD

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) may evade diagnosis and control, causing unpredictable and painful symptoms. It disrupts growth in children—who often experience more aggressive and invasive disease than adults—and wreaks havoc as it advances through the digestive tract.

Cedars-Sinai gastroenterologists offer innovative, noninvasive ultrasound imaging for a novel view of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, the two most common forms of IBD. Abdominal ultrasound can effectively detect these intestinal autoimmune conditions and pinpoint inflammation, fibrosis and their cascading effects. The scans enable clinicians to swiftly guide care by precisely monitoring how the gut responds to immune-modulating drugs.

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“The sooner you treat a patient with the correct, individualized IBD medications—as close to diagnosis as possible—the better the long-term outcomes will be,” said David Ziring, MD, who is associate director of the Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease Program at Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s and a member of a national IBD consortium.

Intestinal ultrasound can be performed in 10 minutes at a routine clinic appointment. Unlike colonoscopy and MRI, it does not require anesthesia or IV, and it does not expose patients to radiation. The more manageable procedure could increase screening in children, who make up a rapidly expanding share (approximately 25%) of IBD patients.

Buoyed by Ziring’s research breakthroughs, this transformational approach may help physicians soothe patients’ symptoms and prevent severe complications from IBD, such as fistulas, organ obstruction and colorectal cancer.

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