Prospective and Multicentre Study on Clinical-biological Factors Predictive of Chronic Colon DIverticulitis

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROJECT:

Despite being a benign pathology, colon diverticulitis represents the fifth most important gastrointestinal pathology and has a great clinical impact on the quality of life of patients and on health expenditure. Understanding a disease involves being able to make the correct diagnosis of the patient and most importantly for the patient, an adequate treatment of his symptoms. It is required to give accurate information to the patient and answer his doubts, although the pathophysiology of the disease is unknown. As it is a benign disease with heterogeneous behaviours and manifestations, it is difficult to make the decision related to undergo surgery. This decision could be facilitated if it is based on extensive information from the doctor. It is also important to be able to select those patients who have a higher risk of relapse in order to prioritize them on the waiting list for surgery. As a benign disease with occupational active patient involvement, acute diverticulitis has a major economic impact by leading to repeat leaves in some patients, who are even on a waiting list to operate.

EXPECTED IMPACT:

We believe that this project can respond to the management of a group of patients, in which there is currently no consensus in the Scientific Community. Therefore, our results are transferable, as we intend to establish the pathophysiology of the entity known as chronic diverticulitis and detect the predictors of that entity. Currently, there is no consensus on the therapeutic management of patients with recurrent episodes of diverticulitis or persistent symptoms, so that they are treated differently at the discretion of the surgeon, without any scientific basis. It is also unclear whether it is a maintained inflammatory disorder or a functional disorder, which differentiation is basic in order to indicate a correct treatment of the patients. In addition, there is an information gap, unable to respond if a patient with acute diverticulitis will have a high or low probability of recurrence and at what time. There are still no studies answering these questions, key to choosing the best treatment and to give an answer to the huge population of diverticulitis patients.

HYPOTHESIS.