Ulcerative colitis (UC) can be managed with immunomodulation or surgery. We aimed to understand whether these strategies had a different impact on patients' health-related quality of life (HRQoL).
This was a retrospective, cross-sectional study: patients who had a moderate to severe UC episode that prompted the utilization of immunomodulatory drugs or surgery were invited to complete a generic (short form [36] health survey [SF-36]) and a disease-specific (inflammatory bowel disease questionnaire [IBDQ]) survey.
We included 157 patients, 65 (41.4%) surgically treated. The therapeutic procedure had a minimal impact on HRQoL: only the social dimension of the IBDQ and the physical function component of the SF-36 were significantly different between the study arms - lower for the surgically treated patients. The type of surgery had no impact, but the occurrence of pouchitis, namely, in a chronic form, was associated with a lower HRQoL. Regression analysis confirmed surgery as an independent predictor of lower scores in the social dimension of the IBDQ (-4.646, 95% CI -6.953 to -2.339) and in the physical functioning (-9.622, 95% CI -17.061 to -2.183) and physical role functioning (-3.669, 95% CI -7.339 to 0.001) dimensions of the SF36.
Although usually feared by patients, surgery has a limited impact on UC patients HRQoL when compared to medical management with immunomodulatory drugs.