Post-inflammatory Polyp Burden as a Prognostic Marker of Disease-outcome in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

Background And Aims: Post-inflammatory polyps [PIPs] are considered as indicators of previous episodes of severe inflammation and mucosal ulceration. Inflammatory bowel disease [IBD], namely Crohn's disease [CD] and ulcerative colitis [UC], exhibit a perpetuating, relapsing and remitting pattern, and PIPs are a frequent sequela of chronicity. The aim of this study was to determine whether a high PIP burden is associated with a more severe disease course in patients with IBD.

Oesophagomediastinal fistula: a rare complication of tuberculosis.

We report a case of a woman from Thailand, living in Malta, who was diagnosed with concomitant tuberculosis (TB) and HIV with depleted CD4 count. Her case was further complicated by the formation of a fistula between the mediastinal lymph nodes and the oesophagus, an unusual finding but for which she had many risk factors. The diagnosis was suspected on CT scan of the thorax and confirmed via upper gastrointestinal endoscopy.

Identification of antibiotic resistance patterns in strains isolated from gastric biopsies using real-time PCR and genotypic analysis.

Background: is associated with dyspepsia, mucus-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma, gastritis, and peptic ulcer disease. Treatment in Malta consists of triple therapy, which consists of a proton pump inhibitor and 2 of the antibiotics amoxicillin, clarithromycin, metronidazole and fluoroquinolones. We aimed to determine the resistance rates for clarithromycin and fluoroquinolones in patients with , and its incidence, in patients undergoing an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) using real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).

Transethnic analysis of the human leukocyte antigen region for ulcerative colitis reveals not only shared but also ethnicity-specific disease associations.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the gut. Genetic association studies have identified the highly variable human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region as the strongest susceptibility locus for IBD and specifically DRB1*01:03 as a determining factor for ulcerative colitis (UC). However, for most of the association signal such as delineation could not be made because of tight structures of linkage disequilibrium within the HLA.

Multiorganism sepsis secondary to enteric aorto-iliac graft fistulation.

A woman in her early 70s with a history of infrarenal aortic endarterectomy and aorto-bi-iliac Dacron grafting 4 years before presented with recurrent septicaemias, occasionally polymicrobial and caused by a wide variety of organisms. After treatment for her sixth bacteraemia, enteroscopy showed a small area of ulceration with synthetic graft material protruding into the distal duodenal lumen. This was followed by positron emission tomography/CT, which showed mild increase in tracer uptake in the same region localised by a previously placed haemoclip.

Construction and benchmarking of a multi-ethnic reference panel for the imputation of HLA class I and II alleles.

Genotype imputation of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region is a cost-effective means to infer classical HLA alleles from inexpensive and dense SNP array data. In the research setting, imputation helps avoid costs for wet lab-based HLA typing and thus renders association analyses of the HLA in large cohorts feasible. Yet, most HLA imputation reference panels target Caucasian ethnicities and multi-ethnic panels are scarce.

Vitamin D and Ulcerative Colitis: Is There a Relationship with Disease Extent?

Introduction: Patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) can suffer from low serum vitamin D that can result in complications such as low bone mineral density. It can also reflect underlying disease severity.

Methods: One hundred and ninety-seven patients previously diagnosed with UC from 2 European centers were prospectively recruited through the out-patient clinics.

An unusual diverticulum adjacent to two large colonic polyps; a case report.

Background: Adenocarcinomas can arise in a variety of circumstances in which intestinal segments have been used for urinary diversions. Whereas ureterosigmoidostomy is the oldest and simplest form of continent urinary diversion it also seems to be the most dangerous in this regard. Herein we present a case of colonic neoplasia complicating a non-functioning ureterosigmoidostomy after 55 years; the longest latent period documented to date.

Corrigendum: The Conversion of Planned Colonoscopy to Sigmoidoscopy and the Effect of this Practice on the Measurement of Quality Indicators.

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/ajg.2017.

The Conversion of Planned Colonoscopy to Sigmoidoscopy and the Effect of this Practice on the Measurement of Quality Indicators.

Objectives: A cecal intubation rate (CIR) of >90% is a well-accepted quality indicator of colonoscopy and is consequently monitored within endoscopy units. Endoscopists' desire to meet this target may mean that incomplete colonoscopies are recorded as flexible sigmoidoscopies. The aim of this study was to examine whether the conversion of requested colonoscopies is a clinically significant phenomenon and whether this impacts upon the measurement of quality indicators.

Segmental colitis associated with diverticulosis: is it the coexistence of colonic diverticulosis and inflammatory bowel disease?

Segmental colitis associated with diverticulosis (SCAD) is an inflammatory process that affects colonic luminal mucosa in segments that are also affected by diverticulosis. Its prevalence varies between 1.15% and 11.

Aspiration of a speaking valve.

Foreign body aspiration (FBA) is a relatively common and serious condition that can result in a spectrum of presentations ranging from incidental to acutely life-threatening. Described here is a case of aspiration of a tracheo-oesophageal speaking valve through a permanent tracheostomy that went unnoticed for a number of years, and an overview of the technique used for its removal. A 70-year-old ex-heavy smoker with a permanent tracheo-oesophageal fistula presented with a relatively recent history of increasing shortness of breath, sputum purulence and haemoptysis.