Shear-Wave Elastography in Intestinal Fibrosis Evaluation in Crohn's Disease

The choice of the optimal timing for surgery in Crohn's disease is a challenging issue and diagnostic tools able to estimate the degree of fibrosis are of great interest in this context. Indeed, inflammatory intestinal loops are more likely to respond to medical therapies, wheareas fibrotic loops need to be treated surgically. Shear-wave elastography, which is a non-invasive and largely available technique for the study of tissue elasticity, is very promising and a recent meta-analysis has evaluated its diagnostic accuracy vs histologic examination in patients with stenosing Crohn's disease, showing encouraging results. Aim of this study is to evaluate the diagnostic agreement between elastographic parameters (mean, median, stability index) and the degree of intestinal fibrosis evaluated on the surgical specimen.