ongoing care
Patient-centred conversations
For patients, diagnostic uncertainty can be overwhelming. For clinicians, time pressures can make it difficult to comprehensively guide patients through this process.
The What’s Up With My Gut patient toolkit has been designed to help bridge this gap. The toolkit comprises a guide for adults, supporting information for adults and a guide for parents and carers of children, downloadable as PDFs. These can be used to empower patients, ease communication and support shared decision making.
The adult guide includes:
•
Conditions your GP might think about
•
Tests your GP might suggest
•
Other actions your GP may take
The supporting information covers:
•
Understanding your symptoms
•
How to feel confident at your GP appointment
•
How to complete a FCP sample
•
Further links to trusted information.
Follow up after negative red-flag colonoscopy
Follow up with suspected irritable bowel syndrome
clinical coding
Follow up after negative red-flag colonoscopy
Many patients (especially those over 50 years) will be appropriately referred for an urgent or suspected cancer colonoscopy for the purpose of excluding a macroscopically abnormal colonoscopy. Depending on local pathways, many patients are discharged from secondary care services having received a colonoscopy that is macroscopically normal, often without histological samples taken or a diagnosis offered.
Depending on the context for the original referral, a normal colonoscopy does not necessarily exclude other conditions, such as IBD, coeliac disease or IBS. If symptoms persist, it is important to confirm whether biopsies were taken (to exclude microscopic colitis) and whether the terminal ileum was assessed where relevant.
Persisting symptoms following a suspected cancer colonoscopy should prompt primary-care reassessment, guided by the Primary Care Diagnostic Pathway for Lower-GI Symptoms
KNOWLEDGE CHECK
Question 1/1
Which safety-netting advice is most appropriate for a suspected diagnosis of IBS?
conclusions
Primary care sits at the centre of early recognition, investigation and management of lower-GI symptoms
About Crohn’s & Colitis UK
We are Crohn’s & Colitis UK, and we are changing what it means to live with these lifelong, incurable gut conditions. Around one in 120 people in the UK have Crohn’s Disease or Ulcerative Colitis. And the impact can be devastating: plans turned upside down; work and education on hold; relationships and wellbeing under strain; dreams for the future paused.
We’re fighting for a tomorrow where everyone living with Crohn’s or Colitis has everything they need to live well, and for a future where we don’t have to live with it at all.
Crohn’s? Colitis? We will face them together.
We are fighting for a tomorrow where everyone living with Crohn’s or Colitis has everything they need to live well, and for a future where we don’t have to live with it at all
click for REFERENCES
A digital learning tool designed to support primary care professionals in diagnosing lower-gastrointestinal symptoms using the national pathway.
