Antonino Spinelli © ECCO

This year, the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation (ECCO) and the European Society of Gastrointestinal and Abdominal Radiology (ESGAR) combined their expertise and resources to generate a Topical Review with a set of current practice positions to facilitate the correct and comprehensive reporting of imaging exams for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) patients.   

Imaging reports are one of the most important tools for clinicians, surgeons and technical staff, and this is particularly true for those caring for IBD patients, who often present with a variety of complicated clinical features. 

Hannah Gordon  © ECCO

On Sunday October 11, 2020, all participants of the ECCO Guidelines on Prevention and Management of Infection met with the aim of reaching a consensus on each statement of the guideline. This guideline provides evidence-based insights into the prevention, diagnosis and management of infection in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. The project is led by Torsten Kucharzik and Stephan Vavricka, with 25 authors from 15 different countries. This is ECCO’s third guideline on infection in IBD; the first guideline on opportunistic infection was published in 2009, and updated in 2014.

Tim Raine  © ECCO

Previous participants in GuiCom workshops at recent ECCO Congresses will have learned much about the adoption of GRADE methodology into the ECCO Guideline process and the practicalities of working with the GRADE process. For ECCO 2021, GuiCom wanted to offer participants something a little different. The GuiCom 2021 Workshop will therefore seek to place the GRADE process within the current controversies and ‘hot topics’ with respect to guidelines.

Antonino Spinelli  © ECCO

The ECCO Guidelines Committee (GuiCom) is known to be one of the busiest committees in the busy ECCO! 2020 has definitely been quite a challenging year so far, but no crisis will prevent us from introducing our newest Committee Member, Hannah Gordon.

Tim Raine  © ECCO

At the ECCO Congress 2020, 15 representatives from 11 countries gathered to discuss the ECCO GuiCom Topical Review on Refractory IBD. This project is being led by Tim Raine (United Kingdom) and Garret Cullen (Ireland). The aim of the project is to bring together evidence and recommendations on how to approach the patient with active Crohn’s Disease (CD) or Ulcerative Colitis (UC) who has not responded to all licensed treatment options.

Glen Doherty © ECCO

The revised pipeline for updating of ECCO Guidelines was recently established. This pipeline envisages updates to the two main guidelines on treatment of Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis in adults every 3 years. Other ECCO Guidelines will be updated approximately every 5 years. Having just completed publication of the first ECCO Guideline on treatment of Crohn’s Disease in adults employing GRADE methodology, work is now underway on a similar update to the main ECCO UC Guideline. Similar to the 2019 Crohn’s Disease Guideline, the updated UC Guideline will employ GRADE methodology to address most of the key questions, covering both medical and surgical treatments.

Torsten Kucharzik  © ECCO

The ECCO guidelines for the management of CD and UC are of particular interest for gastroenterologists and are amongst the highest cited articles in JCC. Updates on the CD and UC guidelines are provided every three years.

The current CD guideline update has been coordinated by Joana Torres, Gionata Fiorino, Oded Zmora and Michel Adamina and was divided into the following four chapters which were distributed among different working groups:

Glen Doherty © ECCO

The generation of high-quality practice guidelines remains a key priority for ECCO as an organisation. Arising from an important initiative by the Governing Board, in the last year GuiCom has introduced significant changes in the way that ECCO Guidelines are created. These changes have been introduced to ensure that we are using the best methodology in the creation of our guidelines, in line with international best practice. By adopting this approach, we will ensure that ECCO Guidelines stand up to robust external scrutiny, that they remain objective and evidence based, and that conflicts of interest are not permitted to influence guideline recommendations.

Antonino Spinelli © ECCO

GuiCom has earned the reputation of being one of the busiest ECCO Committees. Looking at the number and importance of the ongoing projects in 2019, it is evident that this fame is well deserved: it is sufficient to mention the near completion of the new Crohn’s Disease (CD) Guidelines and the launch of the upcoming Ulcerative Colitis (UC) Guidelines.

Joana Torres © ECCO

This year, during the 14^th Congress of ECCO in Copenhagen, the first Guidelines and GRADE Methodology Workshop took place, organised by GuiCom (Guidelines Committee of ECCO). The GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations) methodology represents a systematic approach to making judgements about quality of evidence and strength of recommendations. It has been developed by the GRADE Working Group and is now widely seen as the most effective method of linking evidence-quality evaluations to clinical recommendations. For a year now, several ECCO Members have been working using this methodology to develop the new Crohn’s Disease guidelines.