Grant: CAG/CCFC/CIHR Summer Studentship for Research in Gastroenterology

The inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD) are chronic conditions of the gut. Most IBD patients face the prospect of taking life-long medications. However, for 25% of UC and 75% of CD patients, medication is not enough and they will require surgery. These surgeries are complex, and following operation, there is a high probability of complications or even death. The goal of our study is to conduct a detailed examination of these outcomes for IBD hospitalizations, first concentrated in the Calgary Health Region (CHR) and then extended to the rest of Canada. Through medical chart reviews, we will collect comprehensive data on all IBD patients hospitalized in the CHR between 1997-2007. We will then perform statistical analyses to answer the following questions: 1) How often are IBD-related surgeries performed and what are the outcomes of these operations? 2) What factors can we use to predict poor postoperative outcomes? 3) What are the trends in how medical resources are used for IBD-related hospitalizations? Chris has already begun work on the first stage of our study, and by May, the CHR phase will be nearly complete. He will then spend the first half of the summer finishing the analysis of CHR data and then move on to the second component of our study: using the Discharge Abstract Database to extend our analysis to all of Canada. This project is the largest study of postoperative outcomes in IBD patients to date. Its broad scope will allow us to provide a comprehensive picture of hospitalizations for IBD. This will enable physicians to better predict outcomes of these complex surgeries, having a directly beneficial impact on the management of IBD patients. Furthermore, this study will allow us to make suggestions as to how hospital resources could be more efficiently utilized for IBD hospitalizations.