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Bowel Ultrasound State of the Art: Grayscale and Doppler Ultrasound, Contrast Enhancement, and Elastography in Crohn Disease
Author(s) -
Lu Cathy,
Merrill Christina,
Medellin Alexandra,
Novak Kerri,
Wilson Stephanie R.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of ultrasound in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.574
H-Index - 91
eISSN - 1550-9613
pISSN - 0278-4297
DOI - 10.1002/jum.14920
Subject(s) - medicine , inflammatory bowel disease , radiology , elastography , ultrasound , crohn's disease , contrast enhanced ultrasound , inflammatory bowel diseases , disease
Bowel ultrasound (US) is accurate for assessing bowel inflammation and complications in Crohn disease. Additionally, contrast‐enhanced US provides a quantitative, objective measurement of inflammatory activity in inflammatory bowel disease, and shear wave elastography predicts the stiffness of bowel, an increase of which suggests less response to medical therapy, often necessitating surgery. Overall, bowel US is an excellent, safe, and repeatable choice for routine surveillance and for urgent imaging. We describe an approach to evaluating inflammatory bowel disease and review its features on standard grayscale US with Doppler imaging and show how contrast‐enhanced US and shear wave elastography can distinguish between inflammatory and fibrostenotic bowel.