Safely ruling out inflammatory bowel disease in children and teenagers without referral for endoscopy.

Background: Up to 70% of children and teenagers referred to a paediatric gastroenterology centre with suspected inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) do not have the disease.

Objective: To evaluate whether faecal calprotectin as an 'add-on test' improves the specificity of the clinical case definition for suspected IBD in a general paediatric practice.

Design: A prospective diagnostic accuracy study.