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Inflammatory activity in Crohn disease: ultrasound findings

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Abstract

Improvements in the ultrasound examination of bowel disease have registered in the last years the introduction of new technologies regarding high frequency probes (US), highly sensitive color or power Doppler units (CD-US), and the development of new non-linear technologies that optimize detection of contrast agents. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CE-US) most importantly increases the results in sonographic evaluation of Crohn disease inflammatory activity. CE-US has become an imaging modality routinely employed in the clinical practice for the evaluation of parenchymal organs due to the introduction of new generation microbubble contrast agents which persist in the bloodstream for several minutes after intravenous injection. The availability of high frequency dedicated contrast-specific US techniques provide accurate depiction of small bowel wall perfusion due to the extremely high sensitivity of non-linear signals produced by microbubble insonation. In Crohn’s disease, CE-US may characterize the bowel wall thickness by differentiating fibrosis from edema and may grade the inflammatory disease activity by assessing the presence and distribution of vascularity within the layers of the bowel wall (submucosa alone or the entire bowel wall). Peri-intestinal inflammatory involvement can be also characterized. CE-US can provide prognostic data concerning clinical recurrence of the inflammatory disease and evaluate the efficacy of drugs treatments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sardinian Mediterranean Imaging Research Group—no profit foundation, Via Gorizia n°11, 07100, Sassari Sardinia, Italy

    Vincenzo Migaleddu, Domenico Scano & Giuseppe Virgilio

  2. Department of Radiology, Cattinara Hospital, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    Emilio Quaia

Authors
  1. Vincenzo Migaleddu
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  2. Emilio Quaia
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  3. Domenico Scano
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  4. Giuseppe Virgilio
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Correspondence to Vincenzo Migaleddu.

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Migaleddu, V., Quaia, E., Scano, D. et al. Inflammatory activity in Crohn disease: ultrasound findings. Abdom Imaging 33, 589–597 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00261-007-9340-z

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