[Acceptance of fecal microbiota transfer among patients with chronic inflammatory bowel diseases in a highly specialized outpatient department: a questionnaire-based survey].

Recently, research in the treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases has become increasingly focused on fecal microbiota transfer (FMT) due to increasing evidence of its possible benefits. Still, there are doubts about this method, because there is contradicting evidence regarding its effectiveness and the possible side effects are not well known. Furthermore, the majority of patients are not open to this procedure. We performed a questionnaire-based survey amongst 302 patients with an inflammatory bowel disease that received treatment in our specialized outpatient clinic to determine the factors relevant for acceptance or rejection of fecal microbiota transfer as a possible treatment for Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis. Our data supports the hypothesis that a lack of information about FMT is a key factor for hypothetical acceptance of this method (68 % of pre-informed participants vs. 30 % of not pre-informed participants would accept FMT as treatment, p < 0.001), and, therefore, it highlights patient education as a possible intervention to improve acceptance. The main concern regarding FMT was possible transmission of infections (ranked first by 98 participants). The most accepted method to perform FMT was application via oral capsule (44 % of participants).