Almost 15% of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) showed evidence of excessive steroid use or dependency – an excess deemed avoidable in more than half of cases, a 19-center British study found. And at seven centers participating in a program to reduce steroid use and its associated side effects, significantly fewer patients received excessive steroids: 11.5% versus 17.1%, according to Christian P. Selinger, MD, MSc, of St. James University Hospital in Leeds, and colleagues.
"This advances the case for steroid excess as a potentially key performance indicator of quality in an IBD service, " they wrote online in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics. Using a previously developed online assessment tool for IBD steroid exposure, the investigators collected prospective data from diverse outpatient clinics from April to July 2017. They captured exposure for a total of 2,385…
