Background: Neither the rate of endoscopic remission (ER) in Crohn's disease (CD) after therapy nor its role in patients' prognosis is well defined.
Aim: To systematically review the current evidence on the proportion of ER of different therapies in patients with Crohn's disease and its relation with clinical outcomes.
Methods: Databases (MEDLINE and Cochrane) and manual search of manuscripts found 482 titles. Data was extracted from 24 manuscripts.
Results: Ten different methods were used to assess endoscopic outcomes. Corticosteroids induced a pooled proportion of patients with no ulcerations at endoscopic follow-up of 17% (95% confidence interval: 12-22%) lower than that found with infliximab [44% (34-53%)], diet [43% (33-52%)] or azathioprine [54% (38-69%)] (P<0.0001). Enteric diets and infliximab were associated with 61% (52-70%) and 70% (62-78%) reduction in endoscopic scores, respectively, significantly higher than corticosteroids [45% (39-52%)] (P=0.01) and placebo [12% (1-22%)] (P<0.0001). A linear relation between ER and clinical remission was observed with infliximab (r=0.931). Only one study tried to assess the direct correlation between ER and patients' prognosis.
Conclusion: Available treatments induce significant endoscopic improvement. However, pooled results should be cautiously interpreted because of the diversity of measurements. A better definition of endoscopic outcomes and a prospective validation of their relevance in patients with Crohn's disease are needed.