Psychological Predictors of Post-surgical Recovery in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: a Pilot Cohort Study

The chronic nature of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) leads to a significant impact on patients' lives, beyond intestinal symptoms alone. The sequelae of this can be seen in the increased rates of depression and reduced quality of life (QoL). Surgery may provide a way to effectively induce long-term symptoms remission, although there is a short postoperative transitory period whereas quality of life might decrease. Over the last years, increasing interest has been gained by perioperative recovery protocols, aiming to accelerate functional recovery and to reduce complications. Some of these protocols include an in-depth discussion with both dedicated nurses and/or surgeons to decrease surgery-associated stress reaction. Nevertheless, no one of the proposed protocols has included a psychological assessment in order to correlate it with functional recovery. We suggest that studying the psychological characteristics of the patients (with a specific focus on mindfulness) could lead to open a new research front to optimize patients' outcomes.