Loading Curie Briefs...
Getting the latest healthcare news for you
Getting the latest healthcare news for you
Bowel urgency is a key predictor of serious outcomes in ulcerative colitis, yet a new study finds it's routinely overlooked in clinical care. Urgency was evaluated in fewer than two-thirds of visits and was present even in patients who had achieved endoscopic normalization. Researchers say it's time to make systematic urgency assessment a standard part of UC disease monitoring.
A new retrospective cohort study published in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases reveals a troubling gap in ulcerative colitis (UC) care: bowel urgency — a symptom patients consistently rank as highly disruptive — is being inconsistently assessed in routine clinical visits. Among 262 UC patients followed over a median of 44 weeks, urgency was evaluated in only about 62% of initial visits and 56% of follow-up visits, despite its strong association with disease outcomes.
What makes this especially concerning is that urgency showed up even in patients who had achieved endoscopic normalization, suggesting it can persist independently of visible inflammation. And when urgency was present, patients faced more than double the risk of a serious UC-related event — including hospitalization, surgery, or escalation of advanced therapy.
Key Takeaways:
Why it matters: Bowel urgency is more than a quality-of-life issue — it's a clinically meaningful signal that something may be going wrong. Integrating validated patient-reported outcome tools for urgency into standard UC monitoring frameworks could help clinicians catch disease flares earlier and intervene before outcomes worsen.
