Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to invite scholars working in the areas of clinical diagnostics and surgical management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) to submit their valuable research papers to this Special Issue of Medicina, an open access MDPI journal.

Predominantly, colonic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) encompasses ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s colitis (CC); when the diagnostic classification for these two diseases is inconclusive, the condition is termed indeterminate colitis (IC). Thus, discrimination of IBD into specific subtypes with high accuracy is a key medical challenge because the surgical care of patients is significantly dependent on it. Classification of IC either as UC or CC is of utmost importance when determining a patient’s candidacy for pouch surgery, i.e., restorative proctocolectomy and ileal pouch–anal anastomosis (RPC-IPAA). Hence, studies on disease mechanisms as well as functional outcomes of RPC-IPAA are highly encouraged.

Patients with medical refractory disease often undergo RPC-IPAA. This intervention involves the removal of the entire colon and rectum while preserving bowel continuity, evacuation, continence/deferral, discrimination, and fertility; long-term functional results of this surgery are excellent. The challenges of diagnostic ambiguity and delay in colonic IBD is a grave and unsolved issue, which is associated with an increased risk of adverse outcomes. However, recent findings in the areas of ectopic colonic ileal metaplasia and DEFA5 (alias HD5) expansion seems promising (PMID: 33690604 and PMID: 28817680).

Dr. Amosy E M'Koma
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Medicina is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• inflammatory bowel disease
• clinical diagnostics
• colorectal surgery
• Crohn’s colitis
• ulcerative colitis

• Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Clinical Diagnosis and Surgical Management in Medicina (3 articles)