Endomicroscopy in Ulcerative Colitis

This is a confirmatory, multicentric, prospective, randomized, controlled, single-blind study in subjects with long standing ulcerative colitis in clinical remission with indication for surveillance colonoscopy. The patients are examined with the PENTAX EC-3870CIFK and EC-3870CILK confocal colonoscopes either by chromoscopy-guided endomicroscopy with targeted biopsies or by standard endoscopy with random and targeted biopsies. The aim is to investigate whether chromoscopy-guided endomicroscopy has a higher sensitivity than standard endoscopy with respect to detection of intraepithelial neoplasia (IN) and to compare the proportion of patients with at least 1 IN detected by chromoscopy-guided endomicroscopy versus standard endoscopy.