Predicting Therapeutic Intervention for Patients with Quiescent Crohn’s Disease Using the Small Bowel Capsule Endoscopy Score

Introduction: Small bowel (SB) capsule endoscopy (SBCE) is a sensitive modality for screening the entire SB of patients with Crohn’s diseases (CD); however, the prognostic impact of the results is unclear. We evaluated the ability of the SBCE score to predict therapeutic intervention for patients with CD and SB lesions without clinical symptoms as well as negative C-reactive protein (CRP) levels. Methods: Fifty-six patients who underwent a patency evaluation and had a CD activity index (CDAI) score <150 mg/dL and CRP level <0.5 mg/dL were included. Twenty-one and 35 patients had CD classified as Montreal classifications L1 and L3, respectively. The initial SBCE scores were subsequently grouped according to the presence or absence of intervention based on cutoff values. We examined whether the scores could predict the need for therapeutic intervention at 1 year, 2 years, and 5 years. The CD activity in capsule endoscopy (CDACE) score was used as the SBCE score. Results: The median observation period was 1326 days. Twenty-one patients received therapeutic intervention. There were significant differences between patients with and without treatment intervention according to the CDACE cutoff value of 420 at 1 year, 2 years, and 5 years. Significant differences between patients with Montreal classification L1 with and without intervention were observed at 1 year and 2 years. The CDACE score was moderately and strongly correlated with the Lewis score and capsule endoscopy CDAI score, respectively (Spearman rank correlation coefficient: ρ=0.6462 and ρ=0.9199, respectively; p<0.0001). Conclusion: A CDACE score ≥420 is predictive of intervention after 1 year for patients with CD, a CDAI score <150, and CRP level <0.5 mg/dL. A larger study with a prospective design is necessary to validate our findings.