The American Gastroenterological Association recently published a guideline on the management of pouchitis and inflammatory pouch disorders (Gastroenterology 2024;166[1]:59-85). GEN’s Sarah Tilyou spoke with lead author Edward Barnes, MD, MPH, an IBD specialist and assistant professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about the new guideline and its implications for practice.
GEN: What prompted the guideline?
Dr. Barnes: This is the first society-sponsored guideline related to pouchitis and inflammatory conditions of the pouch. There’s been a push in the last five or 10 years to standardize our approach and delve into the evidence on treating patients after they undergo an ileal pouch–anal anastomosis (IPAA) surgery and have these inflammatory conditions in the pouch. There have been several different consensus statements and different research groups that have led this push to standardize, but now we have come together as a group to develop consensus definitions on what these inflammatory conditions are, what the state of the evidence is and what the future directions are.
