Bowel Urgency in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Bowel urgency is commonly defined as the sudden need to rush to the bathroom to empty one's bowel. In the field of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (including Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC)), bowel urgency is part of the top five research priorities for future IBD nursing research, and it is a symptom that patients consider to be most important when prioritizing their disease control. Urgency is a patient-reported outcome associated with compromised quality of life and future risk of hospitalizations, corticosteroids, and colectomy in patients with UC. A meta-analysis of 321 studies examining bowel urgency revealed that only one-third of these clinical studies clearly defined the concept of bowel urgency. Definition of bowel urgency was heterogeneous as 14 different definitions were identified. In most of these studies, non-validated questionnaires were used. They are based on subjective responses of the patients, and they could determine evaluation bias. These data emphasize the lack of standardization in bowel urgency assessment.