Introduction: Clinical management in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is constantly changing. Although improvement in symptoms is of paramount importance, using this as the only surrogate marker of disease activity might underestimate disease burden.
Sources of data: New data from randomized clinical trials are now available. Treatment paradigms are constantly changing leading to an evolution in the therapeutic approach in routine IBD practice.
Areas of agreement: Patients with an aggressive disease phenotype should be identified at the onset and treated more intensely in order to achieve long-lasting mucosal remission.
Areas of controversy: Patients who have mild and indolent disease need to be identified and not over treated.
Growing points: The primary endpoint in IBD management should ideally be mucosal healing. Ample data are now available that correlates mucosal healing with surgical-free outcomes with minimal intestinal damage and patient disability. However, the exact degree of mucosal healing that will lead to improved long-term remission, decreased hospital and surgical rates remains unknown.
Areas timely for developing research: Clinical translational work is needed to identify novel pathways in IBD pathogenesis that sub-select patients who would benefit by specific-cytokine pathway modulation.
Keywords: Crohn's disease; anti-TNF drugs; inflammatory bowel disease; mucosal healing; remission; ulcerative colitis.