Abstract
Background
Patients are frequently counselled on vaccinations and screened for infectious diseases prior to starting immune-modulating therapy; however, the most up-to-date ECCO guideline on the subject (1) recommends vaccination screening and completion at diagnosis. We assessed adherence to the ECCO guidelines in patients diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Methods
Medical records from 100 IBD patients up to 6 months of their diagnosis were analysed retrospectively at a tertiary IBD centre in the UK. Data were collected for infectious diseases screening, documentation of vaccination history and education/advice on vaccination. Vaccination rates for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, hepatitis B, human papillomavirus (HPV), influenza, pneumococcal and varicella-zoster were documented if they were recorded in the medical notes.
Results
A total of 84% of patients were not screened for infectious diseases at diagnosis or within 6 months. Overall, 97% had no vaccination history documented and 97% were not advised to attend their GPs for vaccinations.
Conclusion
Despite the existence of international guidelines, poor compliance to vaccination in patients with IBD has been shown in line with previous reports (2). This suboptimal vaccination compliance could be partly due to poor documentation and the retrospective method of data collection. However, there is clearly an urgent need for education and execution of vaccination guidelines in IBD. This implementation of work is now ongoing at our unit through automatic formal standard vaccination notification on every IBD clinic visit, which will be further re-audited in 6 months’ time.
P353 Assessing compliance to screening for infectious diseases and vaccination in patients newly diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease
