Inflammatory bowel disease and novel endoscopic technologies.

Conventional ileocolonoscopy and barium small bowel follow-through are useful techniques for assessing the extension and severity of disease in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). More recently, novel techniques to enable IBD diagnosis have been developed, such as capsule endoscopy (CE), balloon enteroscopy (BE), computed tomography enterography (CTE) and magnetic resonance enterography (MRE). The advantages of CE and BE are that they enable mucosal assessment directly whereas the usefulness of CTE/MRE is in its ability to enable detection of transmural inflammation, stenosis, and extraintestinal lesions including abscesses and fistulas. In ulcerative colitis (UC), colitis-associated dysplasia/cancer is one of the critical complications in patients with chronic disease. Detection of colitis-associated cancer is difficult in cases with inflammation. Magnification colonoscopy has been used to detect dysplasia in patients with chronic UC. Furthermore, colon CE and endocytoscopy have also developed and these might be used for selected patients in the near future.