2017 Inflammatory Bowel Diseases and Other Inflammatory Pathologies of the GI Tract

The incidence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) continues to rise in the world, and now affects more than 1.6 million Americans. We currently have a better understanding of the pathogenesis of IBD, allowing for the development of new therapies targeting the inflammatory pathways. Hence, the management of this complex disease is in turn becoming complex, where the clinician needs to use evidence-based medicine to personalize the use of the appropriate therapy for each individual patient. Becoming familiar with therapeutic drug monitoring and disease monitoring is essential in order to maximize the therapeutic benefit of drugs and the chance of maintaining IBD patients in remission and preventing complications. Patient with long standing IBD carry an increased risk of colon cancer, and the IBD therapies available have potential side effects; it is essential for healthcare providers to use current guidelines in prevention and screening of these complication in order to maximize patients’ health and the quality of care. IBD not only affect the gastrointestinal tract, but also several organs system, often requiring a multidisciplinary approach to the patients involving several medicine specialties, colorectal surgery, and radiology as well as nutrition support.

Other auto-immune and inflammatory diseases of the GI tract, such as eosinophilic esophagitis, celiac disease, microscopic colitis, auto-immune pancreatitis, appendicitis and diverticulitis, often presents a challenge to the healthcare providers in terms of diagnosis, management and disease monitoring. New guidelines in the management of these diseases have been recently published, and need to be judiciously applied and individualized to patients.

The purpose of this symposium is to provide up to date information on the pathogenesis of diseases process, as well as evidence based recommendations on the management and monitoring of IBD and other inflammatory and auto-immune disorders. Through this course, the gap between state of the art practice and current practices will be closed in order to provide a high quality, comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to patients with IBD. We believe this approach will improve the quality of care provided to patients, decrease the risk of complications and morbidity, and reduce the overall burden of IBD on the patient and society.