{
  "abstract": "The number of paediatric patients diagnosed with IBD has doubled in the UK in the last 10 years. 1 Patients are likely to experience delays in both diagnosis and treatment, associated with an increased risk of complications.2 The IBD Standards UK guidelines3 recommend that:Patients who are referred with suspected IBD should be seen within four weeks.Endoscopic assessment should be accessible within four weeks from initial tertiary care presentation.This retrospective audit assessed how effectively a tertiary hospital in England met these guidelines.A selection of paediatric patients diagnosed with IBD between January 2020 and May 2025 (approximately 20% of patients diagnosed during this time) were identified using Trust databases; patients were excluded if diagnosed abroad, privately, or at a different hospital. The following was recorded for each patient: age, sex, IBD subtype, remission status at one year, whether they presented to A&E with symptoms, and the dates of the GP referral, presentation to secondary and tertiary care, and endoscopy date.81 paediatric patients were included in the audit: 49 male and 32 female. The average age at diagnosis was 11.5 years. 54 patients were diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease (CD), 15 with Ulcerative Colitis (UC), and 12 with inflammatory bowel disease unclassified (IBD-U). In this cohort, for all IBD subtypes, 30% of patients presented to A&E before diagnosis. Most patients experienced symptoms for less than 6 months before GP presentation (52% in CD, 60% in UC, and 50% in IBD-U). Patients with CD were most likely to experience symptoms for 1-2 years before presentation (11% in CD, 7% in UC, 8% in IBD-U). The average number of days between a GP referral and a secondary care appointment was 49.1 in CD, 15.5 in UC, and 122.6 in IBD-U. The analysis in this study (figure 1) shows the average number of days between tertiary care appointment and endoscopic investigation was 24.2 days in CD, 15.2 days in UC, and 48.3 days in IBD-U. 55% of the patients were in remission at one-year post-diagnosis.At this tertiary centre, paediatric patients with IBD wait less than 4 weeks between secondary care referral to tertiary care assessment and then onwards to endoscopy, meeting the IBD Standards UK guidelines. However, paediatric IBD patients experience a delay from primary care (GP) referral, with the delay most profound in IBD-U and least in UC. This may be because UC symptoms typically include blood in the stool, which prompts more urgent assessment. Patients without obvious alarming symptoms such as blood in stools likely experience symptoms for months prior to presentation and referral, due to symptom overlap with an alternative diagnosis such as IBS.References Green Z, Ashton JJ, Rodrigues A, et al. Sustained increase in paediatric IBD incidence across the South-West UK over 10 years. Inflammatory Bowel Diseases 2024;30(12):2271–2279.Jayasooriya N, Baillie S, Blackwell J, et al. Systematic review with meta-analysis: time to diagnosis and the impact of delayed diagnosis on clinical outcomes in IBD. Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics 2023;57(6):635–652.IBD UK. IBD Standards Core Statements, 2009;1-4. Available from: https://ibduk.org/ibd-standards.Abstract OC82 Figure 1Average number of days from secondary to tertiary care, and tertiary care to endoscopy in paediatric IBD patients",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "St George’s, University of London"
      ],
      "name": "Hannah Eustice"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "St George’s University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust"
      ],
      "name": "Attah Ocholi"
    }
  ],
  "title": "OC82 A retrospective audit of referral and diagnostic timelines in IBD paediatric patients compared to the IBD Standards UK guidelines",
  "uid": "87839850-ec2f-5e0e-9898-1c03957a0f8a"
}